Tristan Chord
by SlvrSoleAlchmst1
Summary: Some shounen ai: Matt x Mello. Two days left before they have to go down. Matt doesn't know what to think, but Mello knows the price they're paying. A hard desperation is rising in them both, and they've got to find answers before it's too late.
1. Attic Space

_A/N: Most of my words are failing me at present. This multi-chapter is without doubt my masterpiece. Having an incredible beta is a huge part of that. _**Tobi Tortue**_, I think you know that you have my gratitude — forever and ever and _ever_. I tried my hardest to rise to your challenges and correct everything that I could under your tough (but necessary!) lash for this first chapter. _

_I really hope everyone enjoys this mad ride. I've finished all the writing, but I'll be posting chapters in intervals as they are beta read and tweaked. Intelligent feedback is welcome; I hope this piece inspires you to think. I hope you feel the intensity. I really had demons on my ass making me write this one. _

_It was worth it. _

_Cheers,_

_SlvrSoleAlchmst1 _

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**Attic Space**

The London flat wasn't the kind of place that made realtors giddy, but it would do for two days.

Matt spread out his computer equipment on the hardwood floor, careful to avoid Mello's boots. The blonde was pacing shakily, like he'd just figured out the nine lives thing was a lie. There was something electric in the air, but it was probably just the tension and the fact that neither of them had spoken for at least thirty minutes. Matt glanced out the window, where smog collected thick like cotton and the sun was a disc of silver.

London. Of all the places he was sure they'd never go back to.

Mello's cell phone rang, but he flipped it off after half a circulation of the ring tone and stuffed it back into his pocket. Matt didn't ask. It was probably Hal, worrying for them both, but the plan wasn't changing and the cards had been laid. Mello likely wanted Hal to clam up so they could get on with their lives. Matt couldn't blame him.

Not that there was much left of their lives.

They'd talked about it beforehand. Matt could hardly remember their first conversation; he'd started throwing insults and Mello had damn near killed him. Matt's head had made friends with the wall, and everything else was hazy after that. When he'd fully regained consciousness, he remembered telling Mello that he could fuck himself and die, because it was a stupid, risky plan.

Mello had laughed.

Matt supposed — after a long bout of reflection — that he wasn't really against it. After all, it wasn't as if he'd ever expected to live much past the age of thirty. It was something he'd grown to accept. It could have been the cigarettes that prepared him. It could have been his recklessness — leaving Wammy's and getting caught up with Mello and generally screwing himself by growing involved in the Kira case. Not to mention L's death, which boded ill for them all. It was proof. What was death but inevitable, no matter how smart you were or when you expected yourself to die?

Matt had learned to live one day at a time.

After Mello had called Hal, he'd hung up the phone and looked at Matt. "We won't have to act for a few days. We can…" He'd glanced sideways at his untouched chocolate bar. "We can go somewhere, if you want."

"What, like a vacation? Now? Are you serious?"

"Matt, I just want to get away from this. Temporarily, before we end up in a position where we're in too deep to climb out." His hands were clenching air.

"I thought we were already at that point."

Mello's eyes had sent a shock through Matt's system. "Damn it, Mail Jeevas – I'm asking you to think about this."

Matt knew then that Mello wasn't joking.

He'd suggested Vegas as a heady last rush. Then he'd asked Mello where _he_ wanted to go, to which Mello had simply replied, "Home." Matt's fingers had hesitated over his game of Tetris. The blocks had piled up at funny angles and clogged his screen, leaving holes like Swiss cheese. Neither of them had ever really _had_ a home. The closest thing was Wammy's House, in England, and both of them had sworn not to go back until L was avenged.

"You want to go home?"

The more Matt had thought about it, the more the idea had infiltrated — crawled up his cerebellum into his brain like a parasite. _Home._ Matt had decided that maybe it wasn't too bad of an idea. Better than gambling and lights, anyway. So they'd gone, and his first breath of the city upon arrival had been bliss.

Now they were in the flat Mello had arranged for them — from some old contact in his number list — and Matt was hoping that if he gave Mello long enough to calm down, he'd finally agree to pay a visit to Wammy's. Damned if Matt could put a finger on why, but he didn't want to go by himself.

"Mello, will you come with me or not?" he asked, tapping away at his keyboard until the computer went into guarded hibernation mode. Then he stood up to hunt for his PSP. Mello's gamble had cost Matt a game of Tetris the day Matt had found out about it. Maybe he'd make up the points now. "You're the one who wanted to come home."

Mello didn't look up from the gun he was checking for bullets. "I just meant to England, Matt. I didn't mean to Wammy's."

Frustration packed a mean punch, and Matt was hit with brass knuckles on. "Bullshit," he gritted. "We've got two days — probably our _last_ two left on Kira's twisted earth until we're toast — and you're the one who said that we should spend that time doing something useful."

"I'm trying to think."

"Yeah, well, you'll only drive yourself to an earlier grave that way." Matt studied Mello's face, though, and he wasn't so sure. Mello's brow was smooth, and the pacing had ceased. Matt had the distinct feeling that it wasn't _Mello_ who was on edge anymore, and it scared him.

Matt didn't want to think about it. They had two days. He didn't care, but he didn't want to _think about it_. He played with the cuffs of his gloves. If he concentrated on the feeling in his stomach, he knew he was queasy, but at the same time he knew nothing had really sunken in. Not yet. In a way, he didn't want it to. Maybe it was because he knew he couldn't handle it, but it was probably just his own stubbornness fucking with his perception. He removed his goggles, as if to clear his vision of anything the least bit inhibiting.

Mello had nearly finished combing their equipment. "If you want to go, Matt, then go. Take the afternoon for yourself. Don't sit there fidgeting." He slammed a refilled cartridge into the hollow frame of one gun.

Matt flipped Mello the finger and gave up looking for his PSP. He wasn't sure he wanted to play it — the thing seemed inconsequential now — but he needed something to do with his hands. They shook a little, and his natural urge was to wring them together, but fuck him if that wouldn't just give Mello something else to rag on.

It wasn't that he didn't want to go. A few peculiar, genius children and a tired old stone building didn't scare him. Not on the outside, anyway. And maybe "scare" wasn't the right word. It was more an unease that Matt felt, and that was only when he thought about the years they'd spent there and the reason that they'd left. It was almost like he was being haunted, the way Matt's abdomen would cinch whenever he thought about Roger's face, or the bell tower in the south wing, or L's locked room or the shelf where Mello had kept his chocolate. So many innocent, untainted childhood memories, and Matt wasn't sure that he could face them again. Not when he was something so different from what he'd been in his past.

He tossed his goggles to the floor, gloves falling down soon after to make a little mound of his possessions.

"You aren't taking anything with you?" Mello asked, hand resting at the nape of his neck and looking at Matt from beneath blonde fringe. And damn it, Matt hated it when Mello looked at him that way. It was a probing look, something so far-seeing that Matt felt raped every time Wammy's Number Two Genius graced him with it. It wasn't mocking, exactly, nor was it anything overtly curious, but somehow Matt always felt as if Mello were holding him captive. He'd halt, frozen in those few seconds of the stare when Mello would narrow his eyes just slightly, like he already knew all of Matt's thoughts and wanted to linger in the knowing. It made his skin crawl.

For some reason he always met the look right back.

"I don't need anything else besides these," Matt responded mechanically, waggling his pack of cigarettes in the open air between them. He couldn't let go of Mello's gaze. "No one's going to recognize me around here, except maybe Roger, and that's not a problem, is it?"

Mello was still considering him, but he'd broken the spell to run his eyes slowly over Matt's figure. Matt forced himself not to move. He'd be damned if he let Mello cow him — if that was what Mello was aiming to do. Matt couldn't be sure. He felt as if he were being searched, like this time Mello was combing him for information that couldn't be gleaned by looking into Matt's eyes alone. Matt straightened his back, and he heard it creak. _Damn it, Mello, don't look at me that way._

"If you're ready to let me leave now, why don't you do it and go eat some chocolate or something." His voice came tight and quiet, nerves dancing a ballet, but it didn't matter. Mello was the prima ballerina. And Mello knew it.

"I'm not keeping you here, Matt."

Oh, but he was. He _was_. Those eyes made Matt's heart pump. They rendered him weak with something foreign, and the feeling tied him there. Mello was holding him in place with a force that made Matt feel utterly _possessed_. That stare said Matt would go through a tempest of withdrawal if he ever let it stop caressing him. If he allowed Mello's sharp, glazed eyes to cease their touch, there would be torture, and there would be torture tenfold if he let it keep going. But Matt could almost swear he wanted those eyes on him longer.

Wait… what?

Matt blinked, and when he looked again, Mello was twisting the beads on his rosary and paying him no attention. Matt resisted the urge to seize the blonde by that same prayer string and, oh — maybe _choke_ him with it. His fingers twitched. He needed to get out of their stifling flat. He needed the London air; he needed nicotine and a backbone and god, he needed Mello to _look at him that way again,_ or he just might lose his sanity.

Now Mello was ignoring him. Matt fought the clash of opposing data on his inner hard drive. He didn't have time to piece together every whim and vague desire that his mind latched on to. They were already living on borrowed time, and fuck if Matt would waste that time on someone as temperamental as Mello.

So the hell with it.

"I'll see you when I get back," Matt said, and he let the door bang on his way out.

— x —

He almost couldn't get himself to step through the gates. They were creaky, made of wrought iron, and painted an unassuming black. Beyond them lay Wammy's House, a stone monolith that at once made Matt think of both sanctuary and exposure. He remembered the days he'd spent inside, snuggled in a blanket by the fire while Roger told them stories. Then his eyes rose to the bell tower, and his blood ran cold. When he'd overheard Roger muttering about the footage before L's time of death… mention of bells had been predominant.

Did he want to be here? Did he really? Matt didn't know. He slipped a cigarette from his pocket — his seventh since he'd left the flat — and scanned the deadened grounds. It was quiet. The children were probably inside, in class or eating lunch in the dining hall. Matt's own stomach rumbled, but he ignored it and sucked harder on the stick that listed between his teeth.

It was odd to see a place so peaceful. Matt supposed that since he'd left, he'd gotten used to a sense of peril. He remained on constant guard, as peace was a commodity he couldn't often afford. But Matt was sure, standing there at the gates, that "on guard" was something no one at Wammy's ever quite was. Lucky bastards. Roger had monitors, but he rarely felt the need to use them. Watari and L had combined their geniuses to tuck the place away where it would never be disturbed. And if anyone came across it — as people often did, Matt assumed — it was of no large consequence. Wammy's House was just an orphanage, after all. Quillsh Wammy had made certain that it would always appear as such from the outside. None would ever dig deep enough into the system to examine which extraordinary orphans were accepted, or what kind of educations they received.

Of course, it had helped that Watari and L _were_ the system.

Matt blinked back floating ash as it teased his lashes. He reached for his goggles, but they weren't there; he'd left them behind. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, the smell of winter mold and dead grass on the grounds mixing with the sweet, bitter smoke of his cigarette. It felt familiar. He leaned on the iron bars and let himself drift.

If nostalgia could manifest itself as something tangible, then Matt tasted it. He could _taste it_, and he wasn't sure it was a welcome sensation. There he was at present, standing outside the place where he'd grown up, but he was being transported to the past on a wave of vertigo. He'd thought his memories had long lost their sharpness, but they slid into focus as he took another drag.

He remembered the attic, where he used to go to read or play games after everyone else had fallen sleep. The flashlight's electric glow protected him from nocturnal stirrings outside. Creatures that liked dark skittered away from his light. Roger had asked the entire dorm where that flashlight had got to, and Matt remembered pulling his goggles down to hide his eyes.

He remembered stealing Mello's chocolate one day — stowing it up in the rafters next to Near's missing LEGOs — only to go back for it when Mello threw a fit and find that it had melted. He remembered the time he almost burned the place down, lighting matches under the eaves when he tried his first cigarette. He remembered the night he dragged Mello to the attic with him, asked him if he could keep a secret. Mello had said yes, and then used Matt's secret to blackmail him into a multitude of silly things later.

Then one day they'd installed an electric bulb for more light. The place had morphed into a tradition, a special retreat, and soon it became the hideaway where they talked about the group of girls in dorm two. Or the cases that L was working on. Or how best to infuriate Near. Nothing divulged there ever left. Nothing spoken about was ever discussed until they were back under those same eaves once more, listening to the hoots of the owls in the dim glow.

"What's your favorite type of music?" Mello had asked Matt one night, after Matt had finished his turn at interrogation and asked Mello which girls he thought wore thongs.

"Music? Way to waste your turn. Why ask me about that?" Matt snorted and the floorboards creaked their agreement.

"I like the opera."

Matt remembered taking off his goggles to peer at him. Mello was looking back, ready to lash out if Matt dared release a peep of scorn.

"Opera? Yeah, so what's so wrong with that? I don't mind the opera, either. I've got the score of Madame Butterfly somewhere in my closet. I liked it when we covered it in Music Theory." He remembered watching the way Mello's face had relaxed into something vaguely pleasurable.

"My favorite is Tristan and Isolde."

"_Tristan und Isolde,_" Matt had grunted in German. "Why that one? You don't understand German."

"I speak it better than you do. I didn't fail the class."

"But why do you like _that one_, Mello?" He tossed his hands helplessly into the air as if seeking assistance from the beams above their heads. "Operas are usually in Italian, or some other language. Richard Wagner was a nut, thinking he could pull off good music with those ugly sounds."

"I don't think so."

And after that, they'd carried up a dusty old CD player that they'd swiped from Wammy's basement quarters. Mello brought them all the scores on discs, and Matt's job was to hunt down libretti in Wammy's ancient library. They discussed the story lines and analyzed character development. They closed their eyes and listened, and Matt laughed whenever Mello let out an appreciative sigh, only to be laughed at in return when he was caught doing the same. Somehow, breaking down opera music had made them feel cultured, bonded.

"But why Tristan and Isolde?" Matt had asked after they'd played the opera through for the third time one night.

"I always thought it sounded like something tragic," Mello had tried to clarify, mouth moving slowly round the words like they were precious. "Dying because of how much you love someone."

"I don't get it, Mello. For one thing, why would a reason like that mean you _like_ the story? And for another, that plot happens in a lot of operas. What's so different about this one?"

Mello had licked his lips and looked away. "It just is, okay? I can't explain."

All this Matt remembered as he stood in front of Wammy's House, the wind picking up to leave him shivering. His cigarette had burned to the filter, so he lit another and drew the smoke in like a bellows. He prayed that the habit of something mundane would return him to the present.

Richard Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_. Mello's remark had been a gross oversimplification of the opera's plot. Neither of them had really understood back then what it meant. It hadn't made sense, and it didn't make sense now. It was undeveloped speculation. An extraneous exchange between two rebel orphans in the attic of their childhood shelter.

Matt squinted at the tiny window that marked their hideout from the outside. It was high up, directly under the gutter pipes and staring back like a slitted eye. Matt regarded it with a sort of detachment, with inconsequential scrutiny. Wammy's looked smaller in the face of everything they were about to do. It had lost its benevolence and become something faded and grim. Suddenly he understood why Mello hadn't wanted to see it again. In the face of their new reality, the cold stone of Wammy's House took on a different connotation, one that was far from the comforting checkpoint it was in their memories. Mello had known it would be this way, so he hadn't come to visit it.

Mello. Matt's thoughts jumped to their earlier confrontation, where he had felt glued to the floor by Mello's stare. There had been something lurking behind their face-off, something tense between them that Matt had not been able to place. He supposed it was natural, really. He and Mello trusted each other. Matt had essentially agreed to die for him, and if that wasn't a sign of trust, Matt didn't know _what_ was. But that wasn't exactly the problem. It went deeper than that, deep down into something that Matt couldn't grasp. It had to do with the manner in which they'd chosen to go down — the timing of it. Not in terms of their plan's execution, but in terms of their own lives. The plan itself was flawless. Kidnap Takada. Hurl a monkey wrench at Kira's cursed skull. Provide Near with the needed advantage. It wasn't without risk to its participants, but either way, it couldn't fail. So Matt didn't know why something still gnawed at him. It was as if…

It was as if they were on the verge of something. Something that might have changed them both had they given it time to mature, but neither knew what it was. Maybe it had started back at Wammy's, during those nights in the attic. Maybe it hadn't begun until they'd met up again, years later. They were on the verge of greater knowledge, on the verge of discovering some crucial keynote. It wasn't quite that Matt felt resentful, or like he wished he'd had more time to live, but something was… missing. They didn't have time to develop the notion, caught up in the whirlwind of Kira as they were, but Matt couldn't shake the fact that he'd pushed something important aside somewhere. Left it behind, perhaps. He felt… empty.

The wind hissed a warning over the dead grass of the grounds, and Matt shook his head as his last cigarette dropped ash at his feet. He wouldn't go any closer to Wammy's House than where he stood.

It was time he high-tailed it out of there.


	2. Ricochet

_A/N: (sob, sob) This chapter squeezed my brain until it popped. Mostly in the editing stages, but that's because I have an incredible beta that makes me fess up to every shitty thing I write and polish it until it shines (like Mello's leather). Also, we're on a schedule-ish thing now, she and I, so I'm hoping that now I'll get the chapters to you lovely readers with less of a wait in between._

_As always, please critique me if you have something to point out. I appreciate having feedback on a piece that's this complicated._

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**Ricochet**

The problem with stained glass was that no matter how dark it was tinted, it never truly hid anything.

Maybe the cathedral was to be Mello's arbiter of truth. There were so many cathedrals in England — elegant, Gothic monstrosities, with flying buttresses and stained glass like crushed jewels. The windows formed pointed arches, lining the high walls of naves that rose to rib-vaulted ceilings. Massive, thick columns held the building together on the inside; rich carvings adorned the stone. Cathedrals were old — they reared up, sentinels of God-fearing ages long past — and they filled Mello with a sense of control. There was order in the world; there was a heavenly structure that dated back to devout foundations. God still existed, and He wasn't Kira.

His boots scuffed the old stone floor as he walked the length of the structure's interior. He'd been trying to lie to himself, but lies were like stained glass — all it took was the right kind of light to see through them. So he'd gone to a place where he'd known truth would shine. His answers would come out in the church, before God, where all closet skeletons fell prostrate at divine feet. And if Mello couldn't get his skeletons to bow, well….

Mello hadn't thought that far ahead yet. But if he didn't string himself out like a tapestry and let God add His healing threads, he'd be right back where he started. Back where he'd been when Matt had stormed out to go to Wammy's — unraveling like a madman.

The cathedral smelled ancient. A draft from somewhere above caught Mello's hair and shifted it. He could feel the presence of the dead in the way the air stirred. His footsteps echoed, tremulous and eerie, as he walked through a vortex of ages where past and present mingled. Low murmurs buzzed from the warm bodies occupying the space in Mello's peripherals, but their tones were muted. There were crypts in the cathedral's basements; there were wooden passages between ceiling and outer roof where only the brave dared climb. The bells had chimed for centuries, seen time pass; the ceiling had looked down on a history of saints and sinners. Cathedrals were the embodiment of God himself, His glory in the highest, tall spires and gargoyles and statues in niches both inside and out. Mello passed a likeness of Saint Peter. It was headless, jagged where iconoclasts had sought to wipe out superfluous idolatry, because God's disciples on earth had made it too physical a pursuit.

But the iconoclasts had failed. The cathedral still stood, a testament to pious strength — something that Mello knew he lacked at present.

It wasn't that he was weak. Mello knew his God was far more intricate in his judgment than Kira could ever be, and as the child of such a God, Mello surpassed the followers of Kira. Mello had trimmed and hedged his conscience to perfection until it was as labyrinthine as his God was complicated. He anticipated whatever consequences he could, and took measures to counteract them. He stayed a step ahead of divine punishment. That took strength. But Mello wasn't stupid. There were things he had done that he wasn't proud of, that didn't fit into the realm of the forgivable. Mello couldn't escape the judgment that went with certain sins; his God wouldn't brush those sins aside. …Would Kira? Mello felt sick thinking about it, but Matt's image came to him unbidden then, and he grimaced at the thought of how Matt was wrapped up in the turmoil.

Mello felt another pang of guilt for making Matt go alone to Wammy's, and he questioned his selfish motives as he rounded a corner. Just what the hell was the matter with him? He was wavering in his resolution, so much so that Matt had noticed something amiss and grown angry. It wasn't acceptable.

He stopped in front of a long rack of candles. In the stillness, their lights flickered, tiny flames jumping in an air current that Mello couldn't feel. He let his vision go blurry — watched the dancing licks of fire until all he could see was brightness. After Matt had left their flat, Mello had stretched out across his armchair, feet up on the pile of their bags and belongings. He'd screwed his eyes shut and cursed everything. His selfishness, his indecision, Kira, Near, Hal, and damn it, he'd even cursed Matt. Because Matt was the reason Mello was losing his mind.

Matt was the wild card. Everything would have been running smoothly, if it weren't for the subtle-yet-compulsive hacker and his understated magnificence. Mello caught a buzz reflecting on it, grinding his teeth at the thought of Matt's vitality. Those damned bright eyes that met his and weren't afraid of anything. Mello was dragging Matt in, dragging him down, and soon everything that Matt was would be put on the line.

And they probably wouldn't live through it.

The reason Mello was on edge… the reason he'd asked to get away for their last two days…. It was so he could collect himself. He felt bogged down by responsibility and fate. Nothing could stop what was going to happen to them — _nothing_ — but for some reason, Mello had been having thought-flickers of small regrets, and even flickers of fear. The candles guttered wildly as if to acknowledge his predicament.

Mello couldn't help but grimace when he thought about the things Matt did to him, sure that he'd be more resolute if Matt weren't around to play the hot coals to his malleable iron. Matt made Mello feel things. Matt molded him into different shapes and made him unsure about everything. Mello had worked himself into many a headache over Matt's innate ability to make his blood run deliciously hot. Something coursed through him like a lava flow, something that rose to peak temperatures whenever Matt was with him. Mello knew by now what it was; he saw it and he hated himself for his passion. It blocked the road to other goals. In order to regain his sanity, protect Matt, and focus again on the bigger picture, Mello had to delve into his longing and learn to combat its affects.

There were things he wanted to do, and things he _had _to do. He sought a way to mesh them both, because there were already elements of each that intertwined. Perhaps he'd find his connecting thread before God. Even if his God had always seen it fit to weave in multiple shades of grey.

Mello didn't know where to begin.

It wasn't quite time for evening mass yet, but the choir stood beyond the pulpit, practicing in a chorus of voices that echoed like chimes. There was a faint ringing in Mello's ears, but he knew it didn't come from those wavering, male sopranos. He often heard the ringing in the quiet, before bed when he was alone with his thoughts. The sound wasn't any more welcome now than it was in times like those. When Mello turned inward enough to distinguish that ringing, it meant he was thinking too hard. His own desires and decisions, no matter how concealed or systematic, were loud enough to draw protest from the last sane segments of his mind.

Mello moved away from the candle rack. Then he halted, suddenly aware that his boots were clomping over memorial stones. He glanced beneath his feet at faded letters in Latin. He was walking atop someone's consecrated remains, damn it — why did they put graves underneath cathedral floors? The chains that he wore at his hip jingled when he stepped back onto plain stone. Even here he was an unwelcome presence, one that interrupted the flow of calm and added to the pains of existence.

But that was the heart of the problem, wasn't it? Mello needed to purge himself of everything that was complicating his objectives. He had to get back to a mindset that would let him work uninhibited. Mello made his way to one of the cathedral's side chambers — sections set off to honor individual saints and patrons. He didn't care what saint's lair he selected. It didn't matter. He needed more than a saint to hear him out this time. No Peter or Mark or Antony could have carried his message to God if they'd tried. Mello knelt at the altar, thankful that he and the musty dimness could coexist without intrusion from the main hall. He clasped his hands and closed his eyes.

He'd start with Matt.

Matt was perfect. There was no use in Mello trying to deny that. But with perfection came temptation, and temptation was something Mello couldn't afford to acknowledge. Not now. Not when his life wasn't the only one hanging in the balance.

"Almighty Father, give me the strength I need to resist him."

There it was. He'd said it. Said it before he'd even known such sentiments would leave his lips. Truth unveiled through the stained glass. His ears were ringing.

"Beneath the laws of your Heaven, it may be wrong to desire him at all, but Father… you and I both know that this isn't why I'm asking you to aid me."

Mello was far beyond real help. It was clear now — he had lost his edge; no longer could he claim to be a step ahead of God's fluctuating temperament where he danced along the line of safety. He'd sinned, he'd murdered, and he'd long ago given up on punishing himself for looking with desire upon people like Matt. Mello was going to Hell, and he knew it. That wasn't what scared him. There were things far more important than his own disturbing afterlife.

"It's not just me that might be harmed by this. It's him in peril, too, and if I don't find a way to subdue whatever it is I feel, Father forgive me, but it'll only add to the mire we're in."

If Mello had thought God was amicable, he'd have asked God to erase his soul entirely. He'd ask God to leave him a shell, an empty vessel, just long enough for him to carry out Takada's kidnapping; then he could die hollow and without agony. But God wouldn't do things like that, so Mello had to compromise.

"I know I'll never stop seeing him as something worth pursuing," Mello gritted, still with his eyes closed and his hands clenched tight, "But give me the strength to protect him from this. He can't find out — not about the Hell that's waiting for us, not about my passion. I don't want him to suffer through that."

Mello was laying himself so very bare. He was in a house of God; it was okay to expose his darkest secrets to Heaven, but… it unnerved him to do so.

"If I'm to pay the price for both of us, Father, then I'll accept that. If I can't accept it I'll die trying. Better I suffer in his place. Give me the strength to keep him just the way he is, and I'll let you send my soul wherever you think it deserves to go. I can't promise you that I'll like the arrangements, Father, but I can sacrifice my own wishes willingly. I think that's a fair enough trade." Mello paused to draw in a reverent breath. His voice lowered. "Please consider giving me your divine guidance until the end this time. Amen."

He blessed himself before rocking back on his heels and staring at the tapestry over the altar. It was the image of Christ and his angels, but Mello was surrounded by demons that jeered. He hoped his prayer would reach the ears of God. If it didn't, he'd unravel at the seams.

The choir had stopped singing, and the organ was moaning a dirge in its place. The ringing in Mello's ears assaulted him over its rolling half notes, and he needed to leave the confines of the cathedral. It had served its purpose.

Heavy as he felt, Mello took comfort in his retreating steps. He would walk away with a determination that he hadn't possessed before his earnest prayer. He wouldn't think of wanting Matt. He wouldn't visit Wammy's. He had one job left to do, and he would spring ahead with guns fully loaded — for L, for Near and the SPK, for everyone Kira had killed. For the people _he'd_ killed, for himself and for Matt and for the rest of the world. For the justice that L had never lived to see.

As he exited the cathedral's high doors, Mello pulled down his sunglasses to hide the scar that cast a net across his face. He'd made one mistake already. He wouldn't fail again.

— x —

Matt hated irony. He _hated it_. Irony was out to get him. It was the insect that circled his head after being batted away twice; it was the pebble kicked off the street that ricocheted back to sting his calf. _Fuck irony,_ Matt gritted. Fuck it up the butt with a bent metal pole.

He was standing in front of an opera house.

Matt ached to bite down on his latest cigarette. He'd had to buy a new pack, and he'd gone for something expensive this time. Cost him near seven pounds; no way he was going to wreck one by grinding it between his teeth. He rolled it around with his tongue instead, seeking control. Fancy, flavored little things that made crackling noises, they were. Imported from Indonesia, or so boasted the package. Djarum something-or-others…. He hadn't really looked, just asked the clerk for some killer good smokes. The fog they belched was unbearably thick and cloying; his lungs absorbed the poison blackness like a pair of sponges.

The clerk had been a smartass.

Probably made himself look raving lunatic, the way Matt handled smoking his new experiments, because he was sure he kept licking his lips to get the flavor off. But he'd stopped caring when he'd found himself staring at an opera marquee.

He'd taken the train to Waterloo Station from just outside Wammy's House, and his route from the station to the flat led him through the side streets behind the South Bank, where the Thames snaked a line beyond the buildings. It was a section of London well known for the arts. There were street performers during the day, concerts and plays at night. Hell, every music maestro within a ten-kilometer radius flocked there to attend a performance at least once a week. When Matt was little, he'd gone to see the London Philharmonics with his Music Theory class. He'd slept through the entire symphony — hadn't been able to see in the nosebleed seats anyway — but that wasn't the point, because the _point_ was that now he was in front of an _opera house_ nestled on a corner_,_ and the announcement on the marquee said—

_RICHARD WAGNER'S 'TRISTAN AND ISOLDE': Mon – Fri at 7.00, tickets £11, £15, £24, £30, £35, £41 (see box office at side entrance)._

Matt was an impulse away from slapping a palm to his face. Because there it was, the memory that he'd pinpointed at Wammy's, projected onto his present in the form of a cheap, fringe enterprise in the South Bank. Waiting two days time to end himself seemed unfair now; something this ironic merited a quicker suicide. Matt's eyes flicked to the black taxis and compact little cars that were zooming along the main street. Perhaps he'd let a stubby cab run him down ahead of schedule. Classically cheesy, that type of end.

Matt squinted at the cigarette in his hand, suddenly aware of the nonsense he was rolling round his mind. What the hell was in his smokes?

Except Matt knew that it wasn't the smokes. Knew he was losing it, knew he'd gone batty that afternoon at Wammy's and was only just now experiencing repercussions. There was nothing threatening or prophetic about an opera taking place in London. Irony was not a beast with bloody claws. He needed to be pragmatic. Hell, if anything… this was his chance to brush up on some German.

Matt was checking his pockets for cash before he'd even finalized his decision to buy a ticket. His gloveless hands slid easily into his jeans, but all he came up with was an old yen coin and a few US dollars. Ah, that's right — he'd spent all his pound notes on cigarettes, then flipped whatever pence he'd gotten for change into the lap of a beggar not five minutes back. He couldn't use a credit card, either, because a system could trace him.

Irony was a son of a bitch.

But there were always ways around an entry fee. Matt didn't like to lie or cheat — they weren't criminals no matter what the world said — but his curiosity had gotten the better of him. A sort of defiance had seized him too, bitter like resentment as he thought about Mello's old attachment to Wagner's opera. He checked to make sure he wasn't being watched by anyone in the queue, and then he slipped past the box office and around the back of the building. _How's that, Mello? I'm sneaking in to see your beloved opera, and you probably don't even know it's playing._

There was a big green door in the alley, all chipped paint and scratches. The sign on it read _ENTRY FOR PROGRAMME CAST AND CREW ONLY_, and Matt leaned against the wall beside it. Well, his invasion point had been easy enough to locate. Lord knew he didn't look like a tenor about to burst into song with a lit cigarette in his hand, but it was worth a shot. He could claim he was stage crew — his black clothes were inside. Yes, I'm telling the truth. It's just that I can't smoke without stripes on. My doctor says the OCD might help me quit.

But something made Matt hesitate with his hand over the doorknob, even though he'd scuffed out his cigarette and braced himself for backstage infiltration. Something heavy, something utterly somber descended like a velvet rug on his humor.

This wasn't… funny anymore.

There was a rip inside his chest that was stretching, tearing, opening a void that put a halt on his physical movements and stayed his hand on the knob. It hit him like a massive steamboat, and suddenly Matt didn't want to— shit, he couldn't—

He turned around to face the Thames river. Glanced beyond the bank, just to make sure there were no steamboats cutting the waves, sailing in his direction. No yacht christened _The Irony._

It was nearing twilight. The traffic sounded distant, and the water lapped in silence. The only noise Matt truly registered was the pounding in his chest. This opera, this feeling that he had, like the world wasn't fair and that there was just something _missing_… the empty sensation that had crept up to plague him at Wammy's…. Now it was hitting him tenfold.

The opera had started. Matt couldn't quite hear it — the notes were tinny through the door — but there were strains of music leaking out from inside. In a dream of slow motion, Matt lowered his hand. Leaned back against his spot of wall for support, and then his hands were shaking. _Shaking_, because he couldn't fucking figure out why his memories were making him panic. He lit another cigarette to occupy himself, breathed another cloud of smog into the air in front of him. Aimed for a smoke ring. Failed because his throat constricted. And shit, the music was louder and he could discern a soprano….

He closed his eyes, his hearing adjusting to compensate for the loss of his other sense, and the opera seemed to grow louder. Now Matt could make out words through the steel door.

Act one. Isolde, calling the sea to sink Tristan's ship, because she loathes him for betraying and ruining her. Matt ached to follow along with the libretti — his German had never been passable and maybe if he could determine the exact words….

He didn't know. Just— damn it, he didn't _know_. He and Mello had listened to this opera together, time and time again. It was something far away and forgotten now, like a fairy tale or the scent of his mother's perfume.

Maybe it wasn't the opera that was putting him on edge. Maybe it was everything — Mello's awkward distance, the dwindling time they were allowed to linger before they crashed and burned, the way Matt's life was yelling at him to do something that counted or to stay forever stagnant. All of it was ripping at Matt's seams, and the answers were there but he simply couldn't reach them. Why did he feel like there was something wrong — something terribly ironic and _wrong_ about the fate they'd chosen? The key to the mystery dangled on a carrot in front of his face, and it made Matt sick to wonder why he couldn't snatch it. He was a rabbit, too innocent to see the wolf creeping up behind him.

And Mello. Why hadn't Mello said anything about this dilemma? Surely Mello had some inkling of the hell it was to undergo a gradual death — after all, it'd been Mello that had suggested they leave for two days to soften the blow. A move like that spoke of desperate measures. Matt wasn't stupid; Mello was feeling _something_ in regards to their suicide mission, but he wasn't talking, and that cheated Matt of an explanation.

Things had changed between them in the years Mello had been gone — alliances had shifted and Matt had switched the color of his goggle lenses — but their past together still remained. Those nights in Wammy's attic were a buoy, a link. Something to hold onto while they were drowning, because they hardly had a now and they didn't have a future. The past was their crutch — the one record of their existence — but it also screamed a warning that Matt could hear from his agitated present. If he had memories, had possessed such a spirited and dynamic life once, then didn't it mean he might be capable of vitality now? Didn't it mean he could live if he wanted to? _Did_ he want to?

The chords in the music changed. Matt knew the turning point by heart.

Tristan lifts his glass to his lips. After a hanging second, he drinks the poison glinting in the vessel, though he knows it for the deadly substance it is. Isolde, broken-hearted and desperate with desire for vengeance, has prepared the poison for him with her own hands, in hopes that slaying Tristan will end her pain. Yet suddenly, as Tristan drinks, Isolde tears the poison from his grasp and swallows the remaining mixture herself. She decides to die in the same idyllic fashion, that her torment might end more surely than it would with Tristan's death alone. Tristan and Isolde lock eyes with each other, both believing they will die momentarily, and in the tense minute that follows… they declare their love for one another.

Matt sucked on his snazzy import cigarette. He knew the secret that the characters didn't. Isolde's maid has actually switched the poison with a love potion. Thus, rather than die immediately, Tristan and Isolde are destined to live for two more acts — persevering and struggling to make their ruined world right again — before meeting their inevitable end as doomed lovers.

Matt could have sworn the opera was mocking him somehow.

He'd had enough. On the way out of the alley, he aimed a kick at a stray chunk of asphalt. It zinged across the sidewalk, hit a lamppost, and came back to peg the front of his boot.

Irony was such a bitch.


	3. Blue Ribbons

**Blue Ribbons**

Mello's hand hovered over the doorknob. There was a muffled sound coming from inside the flat — coarse and barking. He twisted the key and pushed the door open a crack, easing away the thing that impeded his hearing so that he might assess the situation before walking in on it. Mello's eyes narrowed when he realized what the noise was.

Matt was coughing.

He mentally berated himself for growing nervous, then clomped his way into the flat without taking off his boots. He dropped his shopping bag on the bare counter top, chocolate bars and canned items spilling out and arranging themselves like art deco on the granite. Matt looked up — he'd been leaning over the chair at the kitchen table, shoulders hunched with a hand clapped over his mouth.

"Hey," the redhead said awkwardly.

Mello kept his voice neutral. "What's the matter with you?"

Matt cleared his throat. "The matter? Nothing." He leaned a hip against the edge of the table for balance. Mello watched Matt's eyes flicker rapidly around the inside of the kitchen, apparently content to observe any space that Mello didn't occupy. It didn't matter though — Mello knew that Matt could feel his prying stare, because in another moment the hacker cracked under pressure. He didn't ask what Mello had done with his day, didn't comment on the supplies Mello had brought — just started talking.

"Shit, Mello. I went back to Wammy's, and I couldn't even go inside. I watched it from the gate instead, you know? All this stuff came back to me — things I never thought I'd remember again — and after a while I felt like I was being haunted. And when I left, when I caught the train home and walked back through London, I swear to god that something was following me."

Upon mention of being followed, Mello jerked free of the spell that Matt's voice had begun to cast over him.

Matt looked up in alarm when he tensed. "No, not like that," he clarified. "Not something physical actually following me. I had way too much time to reflect, that's all, and while I was out there I think I realized that… well…. Ah, fuck it. I don't even know anymore. I really don't."

Mello watched the hacker run a hand through his hair. Matt tilted his head back and closed his eyes, leaving his throat exposed as he sought the correct mind track. Mello looked away.

"What I want to ask you," Matt began again, but this time Mello was busy stashing cans of soup in the cupboards, "Is whether or not you've really thought this whole thing through. I mean _really_. I know you've timed out everything. The fucking plan is flawless, Mello, I know that, but did you think about anything else? Like us? Our lives, and whether or not it's too soon, or why going back to Wammy's would drive things in so much deeper than it should have? Shit, I can't even piece together what I—"

"Matt," Mello cut in suddenly. "Stop." And fuck if Matt didn't snap his mouth shut on command.

Mello turned to face him, though he didn't dare look into Matt's imploring hazel eyes. Mello knew. He _knew_ what Matt was getting at, and the realization made him uneasy. Matt was questioning him — about the plan to get Takada. Both of them knew there was no other choice. Both of them knew that it had to be done, and that after that, there was really no need to justify a further reason or a deeper psychology. But now Matt was questioning it, and Mello supposed it was only natural. Maybe it was because they were going to die. Matt wanted the answers to everything, needed from Mello every detail that there was to know about what — just _what_ exactly — had made them decide to go down.

The truth was that Mello didn't know. Maybe he'd crafted them a suicidal plot to prove that their beliefs were worth dying for. Or to run from everything. Either way, he didn't know what to tell Matt. He _couldn't_ tell him, because Matt was cynical and Matt was fragile, and Matt had already agreed to go down. Do you tell a dead man that he might have been an icon if he'd only stayed alive? Those were nails that Mello couldn't consent to drive in. Matt wasn't going to be an icon — he wasn't going to get world recognition for helping in the fight against Kira — but he might have had something else. He might have lived to achieve great success, or to fall hard for some woman. Mello knew damn well that Matt assumed his life was stagnant, but in truth, that wasn't the case. And if Matt were to learn that…. If Matt knew all of what he was truly giving up, the regret would only kill him faster.

Mello couldn't handle that.

He swiped a bar of chocolate from one of the un-stowed food piles and tore it open. Matt's eyes followed the movement, tailed the shiny wrapper to Mello's lips and back down once he'd taken a bite. But he didn't demand that Mello explain himself, didn't open his mouth to protest. He waited, and Mello was grateful for it. He felt uneasy forcing Matt to angst this way.

"I think you've had one too many cigarettes, Matt," Mello said finally, his voice cold and uncaring, and God — it hurt to see Matt's face reflect pain at his chosen tone. But he wasn't going to waver. Hell, hadn't he just made himself a promise in the cathedral? No more. He wasn't going to drag Matt down any more than necessary. If that meant refusing to give Matt the truth, then so be it.

Matt considered him for a moment, and then appeared to come to some sort of decision. He pushed off from the table and snatched a cigarette coolly from his back pocket. Tucking it between his lips, he lit it languidly, eyes piercing Mello to his core throughout the performance. There smoldered a hot resistance in his gaze.

"One too many cigarettes, you think?" Sarcasm rode the words out like a tide.

Mello hadn't anticipated that Matt would retaliate. He made sure not to move as the hacker puffed a deliberate cloud of smoke into his face. Matt was standing close, _too_ close, trapping him between his body and the countertop, and Mello didn't like the disdain that distorted Matt's lips.

"You know, I was only trying to get things straight, Mello. Don't you think we both deserve that peace of mind? You're beginning to piss me off with your silent martyr act." He didn't say anything else after that, didn't do anything except for stand uncomfortably close and smoke like a brick chimney while Mello subdued a shiver. But irony hardened the phrases like limestone, and a stalactite of a confrontation was sprouting up between them. It mocked Mello and fed Matt's aggravation as the seconds ticked on. Mello opened his mouth to meet the challenge, because he wouldn't let Matt do this to him. He _wouldn't_.

Then Matt reversed tactics. He pivoted on his heel and began to walk away, brushing Mello off like an inconsequential fleck of ash.

And somehow that was worse.

It was with a rush of outrage and derangement that Mello seized Matt by the collar and whirled him back around, chocolate bar long forgotten on the countertop behind them. "Matt, you _cunt_…. You don't have any idea what this is about."

Matt released a bitter laugh as Mello thrust his back against the cabinets by the kitchen door. The hacker wriggled at the abuse his spine had to take, but Mello shoved him harder. Let Matt taste his ire. Matt knew nothing, _nothing_ about how hard it was for Mello to keep them both afloat when they had so much to fucking lose….

"I think I know _exactly_ what this is about, Mello," Matt grunted, ignoring the hands that crept perilously close to his windpipe. Mello closed his eyes and silently willed Matt to stop talking; he didn't want to turn the hacker blue. But his inward pleas went unheard. Matt smirked through his cigarette smoke and kept going. "You won't tell me why we're here because you don't really know. You've shut yourself down so you don't have to think about the consequences, and you're perfectly happy to leave me ignorant too. You're selfish, Mello." They locked eyes then, Mello staring at furious hazel without the aid of goggles to shroud the scorn that was there.

It was god damned terrifying, because it felt like some wrath-of-God indictment.

Matt's breath was coming ragged and swift; Mello could feel the hacker's chest expanding and retracting beneath his fingers. If he thought they'd stood too close before, it was nothing compared to their proximity now. Mello could feel the heat radiating between them — Matt's fury, and his own sheer panic at the contact — but moving away was something he refused to do. If anything, he needed the confrontation. Matt was digging under his skin and if Mello wanted to do things right, he needed to _shut Matt up_.

He slammed Matt back against the cabinets again — for sheer intimidation factor if for nothing else — and heard Matt's head crack on a protruding doorknob. The lit cigarette slipped from his fingers in surprise; Mello scuffed it out with a boot, still maintaining their gaze. Matt's heartbeat picked up — not fearful, but recalcitrant. They stood there, locked together like a vise to a bar of metal.

Then Matt began to cough.

It was violent, shuddering, and Mello felt the rumble beneath his hands. He let Matt go; Matt doubled over and started hacking into a gloveless palm. Mello's head whirled. What the fuck was going on?

As if Matt could read his mind, he nodded toward the cigarette on the floor in explanation. "Cloves," he said.

Mello's fingers twitched — he ached to wrap them around his quarry's neck again — but he backed off and allowed Matt space to breathe. "And what the fuck does that signify?"

After a long moment in which Mello prayed for his own patience, Matt straightened. The fit receded as quickly as it had arrived, like a rolling spot of hail on an otherwise clear afternoon. Matt's voice was still harsh, though, when he responded to Mello's bitten-off query. "I don't normally smoke cloves."

Mello snatched the pack from the table where Matt had left it and scanned the tiny print. His eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything. Matt had gone and picked himself up something ten times more toxic than usual, and for a moment, Mello wondered whether he was to blame for Matt's desperation. He knew the way clove cigarettes worked. Loaded with twice the amount of tar, they tingled when you breathed deep. They numbed the back of your throat, until all that remained was a pleasant, anesthetized sensation, and they crackled while they burned. They were flavored around the filter, a sharp and complicated taste like nectar and spices. Something damn near sexual in the way they catered to a smoker's most venereal senses.

It wasn't Matt's style. Mello had watched Matt smoke hundreds of times before — Matt barely paid attention to the way the cancerous cloud slid down his lungs and warmed his insides. He usually multitasked — one hand on a keyboard and the other whisking ash to floor. There was no taste that Matt savored, at least not since smoking had become a mundane habit. There was no reverence to it; it was only a routine that helped Matt focus on whatever work required his brain. But Matt hadn't simply been trying to maintain a concentrated thought flow. He'd been trying to dissect intricacies that went beyond his comfortable capacity, or so it seemed by the half-gone package of clove cigarettes in Mello's fingers.

There was another hard cough, and Mello looked up in time to see Matt glancing at his palm before closing his hand. But it was too late. Mello had already registered the flash of red on Matt's skin.

"You fucking idiot," he seethed, Matt's pack of cigarettes the casualty of his clenched fist.

Matt hardly spared him a shrug as he made his way to the sink to rinse off the blood. "It's my own fault. My body isn't used to those damn things and I've been chain smoking them since I got to the opera house."

The opera house? What the…? Mello's throat constricted when he heard the grate that scratched in Matt's voice.

"I'll be fine in a few hours. Sometimes it happens when you put cloves into your system…."

Mello cornered Matt at the sink before he could twist the tap on. He grabbed the hacker by the wrist, as if a second look at the blood would make it disappear. When his declaration left him, it was in a whisper.

"Matt, you're killing yourself."

Matt looked at him then, really looked at him, and for a moment, Mello shivered. The look was one of amazement, of a painful sort of indignance. Mello could read a message in the green flecks of Matt's eyes, and he knew what it meant; he saw the disgust underneath the initial shock and just took it. Matt was disappointed and upset, because Mello had chosen to show interest at the complete wrong moment. He ought to have expressed his concern for Matt earlier, by responding when Matt was asking for answers about what was _really_ going to kill him.

Mello steeled himself for punishment, but somehow he knew that nothing Matt could do would equal the regret he already felt blossoming in his stomach. He was so tied down by Matt's look of betrayal that by the time the hacker flinched backward and punched him across the jaw, fuck if Mello hadn't seen it coming.

Stars exploded in his vision nonetheless.

"Killing myself. Thanks for the news flash, Mello." Irony uninhibited. Matt walked to the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

Mello remained as he was, taking solace in the throbbing of his face as retching sounds began to drift from the direction of the toilet. Matt's system was truly punishing him for the heavy intake of toxins. The light from the bare kitchen bulb reflected off the wrapper of Mello's neglected chocolate bar. It was dark outside, but how long it had been that way, Mello didn't know.

Suddenly, he didn't care. Time was flying and they had tomorrow left to make things right, except it didn't look like they ever would. Mello stretched for his chocolate, but at another cough and retching noise from Matt, he redirected himself to the cabinet on the wall. Matt — genius computer hacker sick in the bathroom — had faced him down and made him second-guess his whole day's reassurance. He wanted to drown in something impartial and dispassionate.

He flung the cabinet open violently and reached for the—

"Tequila's mine, you fucking bitch."

Well then.

Mello almost smirked at Matt's hoarse holler, but he refrained in fear that it would only trigger his coming unhinged. He wanted to smash down the bathroom door, wanted to throttle Matt for knowing him so well. He wanted Matt to puke until he blacked out, but instead Mello let the tequila sit and went for something more fitting. Gin? No, gin was nothing special and he'd never liked the taste.

A memory drifted back to him unexpectedly, though it was foggier than frosted glass. A familiar attic. Their first bottle of pilfered alcohol. Gin, and when Mello had put it to his lips he'd frowned and told a certain redhead that it tasted like pine trees.

Fuck. Mello didn't want to _think_.

His hand closed around a long, narrow bottle — it slipped in his gloves as he plucked it from the shelf. Matt flushed the toilet, cursing his way into a hurricane of further nausea, and Mello took the cap from the liquor to raise it to his lips.

Vanilla vodka. It was sweet, a contrast to his usual taste in something chocolate, and it burned on the way down as he took it straight. He could drown in it; he could shut himself off and forget to hear Matt fighting the clove cigarettes on the other side of the wall. He could drink his way into a floating obscurity, and make up for it later by asking God's forgiveness. He swished the alcohol around the inside of his mouth, willing it to take affect faster. God wasn't going to forgive him anything. God was laughing at him right now. And Matt hated him, and if Mello didn't lose himself in something painless soon, he was going to break. Because he'd hurt Matt — refused him sincerity, and Matt was the only person that had ever made Mello want to be sincere in the first place.

The retching in the bathroom continued, and Mello stalked his way to the opposite side of the door. He leaned against the wall in the hallway, crossed his legs and folded his arms over his chest so that the bottle hung limp from one hand. He stayed there until the minutes blurred into a long strip of nothingness.

A tempting kind of heat had radiated between them back there in the kitchen, when they'd been nose-to-nose and tense with fury. Mello had sensed it, but he hadn't dared act. Instead, he'd channeled all of that uncertainty and all of those temptations into what had been important at the time — his rage, and the urge that he shut Matt up and get him to understand just what it was Mello was sacrificing for them. But none of that was relevant now….

His legs were losing feeling; he'd been standing against the wall too long. The vodka had hit him while he'd been tangled in reflection, curling and slow like a drug in its distortion. Mello blinked behind a curtain of distinctive dizziness; he had submitted to the start of delirium. _If there is a God,_ Mello thought, _then let me go to Hell for this spineless escape_. He'd suffer for retreating into nothingness when Matt needed him most.

He took another swig.

Yes, Matt needed him at times, but Mello wasn't sure that Matt _wanted_ him. Not now, not after Mello had refused to tell him the truth, refused to provide Matt with a key to the other side of the door he'd been knocking at…. Maybe, if Mello waited long enough, Matt would come to the conclusion on his own. But they didn't have time for that. Shit, they were dying, with tonight's fiasco marking their first day down, and all of this would be history.

The hallway light wasn't on, and all Mello could see was a rectangular glow radiating around the bathroom door. It blurred and shifted shape as he squinted at, as if it were a mirage and not a door at all. How long had he been lost inside his own head? An hour, at least. He heard Matt clear his throat, heard him lean over and heave again something awful, but Mello stayed where he was. He tilted the bottle up, and this time his lips felt dull as he took an extended pull. His fingers didn't want to work. He was spiraling downward like a felled kite, faster than he'd thought himself lucky for. Then the door banged open and Mello found himself framed in a patch of light.

Matt started, jerking sharply as his eyes flew to where Mello stood across from his exit. Mello didn't move, and they both hesitated, sizing each other up. Scrutiny sizzled there for a second of their inconsequential lives.

"Fuck you," Matt swore. He retreated again to his porcelain prison and closed the door. Mello toyed with the bottle of vanilla vodka and tried not to feel.

Matt was beautiful; there was no denying that. Though his hair was ruffled, and his shirt full of wrinkles and his face pale like death from being sick, he looked alluring. Even when he'd had to brace himself against the door to hold his weak body steady… even when his hazel-green eyes smoked like vengeance and his body language said if Mello touched him he'd retaliate, Matt was a work of art.

It was thoughts like that that made Mello want to kiss a shotgun. He stumbled his way to the bedroom, fearing further loss of inhibition at every step.

The balcony doors were open, so he wandered outside to lean on the old iron railing. A gust of chill wind blew; he felt gooseflesh erupt across his bare arms. He surveyed the London night despite the cold, and the lights swam with his vision. Was this the last time he'd see it? He should have gone to Wammy's; he should have given Matt his answer — that both of them were wasting their lives and robbing themselves of chances before they really knew what lay ahead. But there wasn't any time for that. There wasn't any time for anything, and if Mello were to tell Matt now, it would destroy them both. He'd made the right decision. He'd done the right thing. Mello gripped his rosary as if to further convince himself.

It didn't feel fair, but _life_ wasn't fair. Kira and his false justice stood as proof of that. Matt would never learn of the life he'd be missing, because Mello would let him go down carefree and reckless, the way Matt had always claimed that he wanted to. Mello was saving Matt from himself, and the two of them were going to help save the world from Kira.

Mello heaved a sigh and moved off the balcony. He could hardly see — he could hardly think — but that was fine. He deserved the headache that he would have come morning.

He collapsed onto his bed and prayed for daylight.

— x —

Matt couldn't have told up from down if he'd been lying still on a hospital gurney.

He forced himself to stand still until the eggbeater that whisked the contents of his stomach deemed it fit to stop. When the nausea faded, Matt stuck out a blind hand for safety and hit only air. That, at least, confirmed his suspicions that he was no longer locked inside the bathroom. It meant that he had finally managed to stop needing a toilet bowl. He eased his eyes open and allowed them to adjust to the blackness they were met with, and after a moment he identified his surroundings. Ah, fabulous. He took another few steps, staggering through the wide space of the living room.

Matt knew that he'd wrecked himself. The stale stench of vomit coated his breath; there was dried blood on the palm of his hand and his throat seared like sandpaper. He couldn't see straight anymore. He—

Fuck, he was going to throw up again.

The back of Mello's armchair was the savior of his dignity. Matt seized it with knuckles white, room spinning as every fiber of his concentration flooded to the death grip that would keep him standing. He'd be damned if he'd visit that bathroom again. No way, no way in bloody _hell_…. He wouldn't keep caving to his body's base complaints_. Just hold the armchair,_ he stressed to himself as he clung to it like a million dollar scratch card. Burgundy cushions, worn and reminiscent of incense…. Mello's armchair would steady him, keep him sane.

_Mello_. That bastard.

Mello kept the armchair in whatever hole they occupied. Matt knew whenever Mello thought they'd be in shit, because the chair would disappear, and shortly after, so would they. The blond was always moving it around with them; he'd had it sent to the London flat in advance, just so he could have it to lounge in, just so it would be there, anchor of familiarity in the churning sea of their lives.

And so much for anchor. Matt didn't know when he'd ended up on the floor, but the chair had failed him and he wanted to rip its stuffing out to compensate.

Oh god, he couldn't breathe; he couldn't _see_. Brilliant idea — real classy — whatever swift combination he'd used to plaster himself with. As if it somehow would have made his frustration more bearable.

_Think again, Jeevas_. He laughed at his own idiocy and immediately felt his throat constrict.

It would all be all right. From his spot on the floor in the dark, stomach swirling, it could only improve. Okay, so he couldn't remember what he'd done with his past few hours… besides drink the tequila he suddenly realized he tasted on his tongue. He'd been in worse scrapes than this. Matt winced and pushed himself to a sitting position.

He hummed a toneless note of concentration, and it seemed that minutes ticked past while he grappled with his senses. At last, he latched onto a scrap of clarity, and the images flew past his vision like movie reels.

He remembered Mello outside the bathroom door, slouched against the wall with lips glistening — moist from the affair with his vodka. After that Matt had swiped the painkillers from the medicine cabinet and hunched on the edge of the tub until they'd taken effect, or at least until they'd seemed to. Placebo thus enforced, he'd ventured out again to check Mello's status — passed out, the bottle of vodka still in his hand, hanging off the side of the bed while he slept. So Matt had wandered into the vacant kitchen and thrown open the cabinet doors to claim his tequila. If there was ever a time he'd deserved a drink….

Matt's irritation had made him get carried away, but eventually he'd found the living room, where his computer equipment was spread out on the floor. Sound of keys, hum of internal fans and operating systems…. He had been aggravated, and his keyboard had brought him calm, but not _enough_ calm. He'd gotten up again and started to move, lost himself in the frustration and the miasma of high proof alcohol, and…. There was something… something raving and lunatic that he'd written on the labels of all his important files….

Fuck it. There was no sense floundering to piece together what shards of his night he had mangled and lost. What did it matter what he lost? They were dead men. Matt's initial anger at Mello's selfishness had passed, and now he was simply drifting. Drifting in a great pool of pathetic, shriveled—

God _damn_ it, he had to get a grip.

Matt stood up, slowly so as not to make his head split in protest. This was… doable. He'd trudge to the bedroom that he and Mello had to share. He'd plant his face in his pillow and pray for sleep, because a long strip of unconsciousness would heal him. It wasn't often that Matt contaminated his system to such a devastating degree. But tonight had been… deserving of oblivion, even if Matt couldn't summon the brain cells to understand why just then.

When he staggered to the bedroom, he felt the chill of night air whip him. Mello had left the balcony doors open. And the bottle of vodka that Matt had seen him with…. It listed precariously in Mello's fingers, hanging over the edge of the bed where Mello lay sleeping, the link between distress and relief. It was a good few feet off the ground. It was glass. If Matt had walked in after Mello's fingers had slipped, he would have been mopping up vodka in the middle of the night. Icing on the cake of humiliation for them both. He snorted at the predicament.

What a blue-ribbon pair they made.

Matt bent to lift the bottle out of Mello's hand and place it on the bedside table, but on second thought he hesitated. No, better to return the vodka to the cabinet, otherwise Mello might be tempted to resume the destruction of his system upon waking. Matt took a half-turn and made for the kitchen, but he ground to a halt when he caught sight of himself in the bedroom mirror. His reflection peered back at him through dirty glass and fragmented moonlight.

Christ, he looked like shit. His face was gaunt and drawn; dark circles ringed his eyes like soot. To think he'd once found the imprinted marks of his _goggle _lenses obnoxious.

Matt clapped a palm to his face and surrendered to reality. He was a godforsaken mess. But he could fix it. A little sleep and some food come morning, maybe his clove cigarettes in the garbage bin outside, and he'd be fit to chase killer notebooks again.

A toast to recovery. Matt lifted Mello's bottle to his mouth and took a swig.

The vodka had a bite, but it was sweet. It was… vanilla? Vanilla wasn't something Matt was used to identifying with Mello. Mello was chocolate. This burning trail of liquid down his throat was unadulterated, shocking opposite. It wasn't Mello, yet it _was_ — because the newness of it jarred Matt's senses and made him reel, the way his mind and body reeled whenever Mello upended his world with a move or a phrase. The vanilla clashed in Matt's brain, warring with the knowledge that it was supposed to be _chocolate_ he tasted when he tasted something of Mello's. The flavor was wrong, but it was… right. The vanilla was a compliment. A complete and utter interruption in the Hershey-like flow of regularity, sure — but it was piquing, and it worked. Matt savored the taste of the stuff before licking his lips and putting the bottle down, on the bedside table where he wasn't supposed to be leaving it.

Well, that had been one hell of an indirect kiss.

The moment he thought it, Matt was rammed by the sense of panic that grew in his midsection. He'd never thought twice about sharing a drink with a companion; it was ordinary. A gesture between fellows. If drinking from the same vessel counted as an indirect kiss, then did showering under the same faucet suggest indirect sex in a shower stall? Showering was not like having sex. Drinking was not like kissing. Matt's sense of panic wrapped him further in a blanket of suffocation as "kiss" and "Mello" intertwined in his mind's eye. A kiss… with Mello? He had to have been going crazy. It was all the god damned throwing up, it was the god damned exhaustion; it was anything but what it was. Matt swiped at his lips in horror, staring down at Mello's sleeping form. Jesus, four or five hours ago he had wanted to rip Mello's lungs out, but now he was thinking about _kissing_ him?

Matt knew that trashing himself had been a bad fucking idea.

He sank onto the bed, all thoughts of an errand back to the cabinet receding from his mind as he tried to put sense to his brainwaves. It was Wammy's all over again, memories rushing back to the forefront of Matt's consciousness like a stampede of oxen, but more concentrated now. There was that time back in the attic, when the flashlight had caught Mello's hair, and Matt had sworn that he was looking at a halo. That time, a few years later when Roger was scolding them, when Mello had defended him and Matt had felt a jolt of something appreciative rising in his chest. Or how about when they met up with each other again, after Matt had worried himself sick over Mello's whereabouts for years? When Mello had contacted him at last — showed up at his door in clingy, shrink-wrap leather? Matt remembered the swallow that he'd been forced to fight down.

All right. So maybe Matt was drawn to Mello's unrestrained aura. Maybe it had _always_ been that way, buried beneath the respect and the curiosity and the resentment that Mello had also managed to elicit from him. But Matt had never, _never_ had a thought beyond the lines of limitation. He didn't want Mello. That was downright _queer_. Therefore, his current thought process… well, any strange thoughts that Matt was having now could be rationalized by blaming intoxication, and quite convincingly. Matt grasped hard at the logic. His mental state at present was a hazard magnet, that was all. His twisted line of thinking… it was only coming out now — in the dark after a puke-fest — because Matt had no control over it. He could brush it aside. It wasn't relevant.

But somehow it felt more significant than that. Matt wasn't sure he wanted to know why. Mello was sprawled across his bed, breathing so shallowly that he appeared comatose. They'd just had a row. It could have been worse, and Matt knew that he ought to let it go. Something was telling him not to write off the subtleties, not to ignore the tightness in his gut or the shortness of his breath, but things were just too… muddled. Maybe he should have gone to sleep on the couch. How long did they have left — a day and a night? Not even? They were going to die, and Matt knew that digging into why he'd called himself out on an indirect kiss was a useless pursuit. Fuck if he would do this to himself after the night he'd just had.

He left the vodka on the table. He kept his boots on, tucking them up on his bed as he lied down despite the discomfort.

He was going to have one hell of a bill to pay in the morning.

* * *

_A/N: This chapter is my FAVORITE CHAPTER. I love it so much that I postponed my spaz-fest until the end. Howzzat for respect?! RESPECT THE TEXT, YO. (Holy Gundams – I apologize, it seems that side effects of giddiness include over-capitalization and poor gangsta impersonations.)_

_Seriously, though. Writing this chapter had me in a zone that I've never been in before. It was like, totally far out, dudes. I was like, "Zoinks! Flower power and peace and love and all of that, tripping on the Matt/Mello high all hippy fashion…." (Not really.) Suffice to say that I am excited to get this chapter out there. I mean, I think Tristan Chord certainly gets better. It might even be said that it gets _more_ intense later on. But I don't care — this chapter is the most amazing thing ever, because I _felt it _the whole time I was writing it, AND while I was editing it after my beta went through it. (As my beloved _**Tobi Tortue**_ so flatteringly exclaimed: "The nuances!")_

_I'd like other people's opinions if you're not afraid to leave 'em after that, though._


	4. Slighted

**Slighted**

Matt woke up to Mello's cursing.

His head throbbed like a million hearts while curiosity coaxed him into consciousness. He knew the light would sear his eyes if he opened them, but whatever difficulty Mello was having that was making him cuss like a sailor…. It was more than likely worth witnessing. Matt was about to have himself a bad day, but perhaps he could postpone it by laughing at something — whether or not he got smacked for his insolence. He rolled over with a groan. Cracked an eye open to take in the comedy.

Matt's sleep-muddled mind snapped awake with a jolt.

Mello was sitting in a chair on his half of the room, between the balcony doors and his bed — shirt off, pants loose, fighting with the knots in his boots and looking like he'd just toweled off from the shower. Matt wondered for a disoriented minute whether his head was playing tricks on him. The blond leaned over to adjust something by his ankle, and the curve of his back struck Matt as something… too exposed. Something about Mello's posture was… raw. Barer than his shirtlessness.

Matt had never known Mello to flaunt such vulnerability.

His stomach did a somersault as he continued to contemplate the scene. The longer he watched Mello, the tighter something coiled inside of him, until the spring creaked with tension. Mello's scar extended and rent jagged crags along one shoulder, reminding Matt at once that Mello was as mortal as the rest of them.

Mortal, and very prone to Matt's wandering observation.

Oh, fuck. Mello was _hot_.

Sunlight from the balcony played across his taut lines — lit him up like a damned billboard that said _Good morning, Mail Jeevas. Remember your mutinous thoughts from last night? Here they are again — your wake-up call!_

Mello at last sensed that he was being watched; he released his bootlaces and turned to glance across his bed to Matt's, where Matt lay stirring. The blond opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again without saying a word. Went back to his bootlaces and muttered another curse beneath his breath. Matt released a strained sigh.

Fabulous. So much for getting a laugh out of things. Now Matt felt… awkward. Wasn't it just like Mello to aid in his bad day by making it seem even more like they'd had some sort of dicey one-night stand.

Matt sat up in bed, gunshot-rapid. Wait. They hadn't…? No, neither of them…. Shit, had they?

Matt couldn't think, and it was with a stab of irritation that he realized he was still drunk. His hands flew to his head. Hadn't _what?_ They hadn't had a one-night stand? Of course they fucking hadn't — and where the hell had those thoughts come from, anyway? He looked at the clock; barely three hours had passed since his head hit the pillow. No wonder he hadn't slept anything off. That's right… last night Matt had been contemplating indirect kisses, but he'd gone to bed before he could ask himself why he was doing so. Apparently sleeping on such unanswered questions meant you woke up worrying you'd had sex with your best friend.

Matt glanced at the blond again in slack-jawed disbelief. Mello's bare top half wasn't helping to ease the confusion any, and he resented this with vigorous indignation. Fuck, it was enticing, but Matt didn't know why the hell he was thinking it because he'd never, _never_ thought such things about Mello before and didn't intend to start thinking them n—

"Matt."

Mello was saying something to him, Mello was trying to get his atten—

"Matt, if you're going to be sick again, go to the bathroom, damn it."

Matt hadn't thought of being sick again yet, but it sounded like a good idea. His forehead was clammy with sweat. Bathroom looked friendly all of a sudden.

Instead of caving, Matt focused his bleary sight on Mello and forced his mind as clear as he could manage. "You're a ray of sunshine. How'd you shake your hangover?"

Mello stayed in the chair for a long time, his head turned to look out the balcony doors at the glow of the rising sun. Matt waited, counting breaths to distract himself from his nausea. After seven or eight, it didn't seem like Mello was going to respond, and _Christ_, did that ever piss Matt off.

"Hey. I asked you a question."

"If I knew the answer, Matt, I'd have told you just to shut you up." Now the blond was standing, lacing up his pants — those god damned _pants_ — and sliding his vest into place over his torso. Mello was weary of him, Matt could tell, and that was annoying too, because Matt had only just awoken.

He hadn't merited a brush-off yet.

"Don't… look at me like I'm… so…" Matt couldn't find the words. His brain was a poorly running engine. "…_Damn_ it. So _trivial_." He hunched over and squinted his eyes shut when a wave of something woozy engulfed him.

"You messed yourself up pretty badly, Matt." Mello had situated himself before the bureau across from the foot of his bed, cool as the proverbial cucumber while Matt battled the urge to heave onto his duvet. Mello's eyes zoomed in on him like little lenses and _shit_, it was that look again that Matt couldn't stand. That _stare_ that probed him, laid bare everything he was, rolled over him and made him feel… see-through. He couldn't do this on three hours sleep.

Mello continued to consider him, tense as a bowstring with his arms folded over his chest. Everything about Mello's physical language was closed. Tentative. It looked… different on him.

For a moment, Mello's features collapsed into something almost readable. "You're…." Then he stopped.

"I'm _what?_"

But whatever Mello had been going to say had been lost, like a fish snapping free of hook and line. Mello dismissed him by turning to face the bureau, scanning its surface for the rest of his ensemble.

That was the trigger that made Matt swing his feet over the side of the bed and stand up.

No more treading on thin fucking ice. It was starting to get _infuriating._ Liquor or no liquor, Matt was sick of mendacity, of disguise, of obstruction.

He wanted to know what the hell had killed their spirit.

"Mello."

Mello flinched as if burned.

"Mello, we need to clear the fucking air in here. This whole thing reeks like a couple of corpses trying to postpone their trip to the grave. The smell gets more rotten the longer you procrastinate."

Mello grabbed his gloves and sunglasses off the corner of their dresser. Made for the exit. "There's nothing to talk about, Matt. Sober up and do something useful today. I'm going out."

Matt took a jerky pace forward in his haste to protest. "Like _hell_ you are." His leg was asleep; he nearly fell down when vertigo took him. He seized the bedpost for support. "Who… who says you can… ah, _fuck_…." It was a merciless dizzy spell, the kind that came with sparkling silver static behind the eyes. He couldn't see a god damned thing. Probably dehydrated….

His grip slipped from the post and he went down.

Mello caught him round the waist with a steely grip. His arm halted Matt's forward motion like a slam into a metal pole. The jolt of being held upright made Matt feel even sicker.

The sinewy son of a bitch.

But at least it had kept him in the room.

He hung there for a moment, draped over Mello's arm like a rag while blood went rushing to his head to keep him conscious. "If you go walking out on me…." Mello remained perfectly steady as Matt strained over the labored syllables. "Just… shit, Mello, stay here…." There was a tiny twitch in Mello's forearm, but Matt decided not to make an effort to move, even if he was growing heavy. "At least _act_ like I'm more to you than the piece you need to make this machine of justice work."

He said it without thinking.

A second of silence passed before Mello released him — stepped back and stilled so perfectly that Matt feared for his life in the instant that followed. Mello didn't even have to look at him — didn't have to say a word to let Matt know he'd run his mouth off like a fool. Crossed a line and said a stupid thing. Matt felt a shiver slip down his back, and swore that if by some twist of fate he lived, he'd find a way to create a law that banned guys from being as intimidating as Mello, because Christ, now Matt was scared.

But when Mello spoke, it wasn't in his Father-forgive-me-as-I-kill-this-maggot monotone. It was just… tired. "Matt. Please."

Matt's jaw fell open, and it was a good thing that Mello had turned away and wasn't facing him to see it, because if the blond ever knew he possessed that sort of power over Matt at a single word…. Matt's jaw dropped nonetheless. Half a second later he closed it disbelievingly.

Mello had made some odd, pseudo-request. Fuck if Matt knew _why_, but it had happened. There was no way that it was a sign of anything good.

Matt swallowed and repeated the phrase, tentatively, probing for clarification. "'Please…?'" He watched Mello's shoulders jerk, then sink in fatigue and the beginnings of defeat. It was too unassertive — not Mello at all.

"Shit, Mello. What the hell happened last night after you left me in the bathroom? I know I was wrecked, but I don't remember doing anything that would have made you start acting this…" He searched for a word. "This… submissive." It wasn't quite what he'd been going for, but damn it, he had a hangover and his stomach was eating at him like a family of starved piranha. To hell with his diction.

His choice of words didn't seem to please Mello, either. If anything, Mello's usual belligerence receded further into a restricted zone. His back hardened a bit, but he showed no other sign of having heard Matt's statement, and he remained just as submissive.

Matt had never thought he would be _wishing_ to see Mello erupt over something.

"Mello, I'm sorry about the fight, okay? Jesus, just… when did we lose our… and how come suddenly we can't…." Mello had moved again for the door, and Matt could see the tight line of Mello's lips from where he still stood at his bed. It didn't do anything for his growing jab of panic. The sudden fear that the Mello he knew had disappeared struck him like a bludgeon. "I want us back the way we were," Matt finished lamely, closing his fists on the sleeves of his shirt to ground himself.

Mello ran his fingers down his rosary. "So do I, Matt. So do I."

Matt didn't know what the fuck was going on, and he didn't want to witness what he was witnessing. Something in Mello was falling apart before his eyes, faster than his drunken, over-tired mind could fathom, and it was about as comfortable as a steel wool blanket.

Mello made to stride out the door at last — gracing Matt with a more substantial response was apparently not an option. In less than a second Matt had surged forward and wrenched Mello's arm to halt him.

The corresponding hit came fast. Mello's opposite fist swung up to purple Matt's face.

Matt blocked it.

Shit, Matt didn't know how, but he _blocked_ it. Mello's face mirrored the same astonishment that Matt was sure spread over his own.

But the blond recovered quickly. "Matt. Paws off me. Now." It was a warning.

Matt chose to ignore it. "This is our last day to relax, Mello. If you don't get a grip, hangover or not, I'm going to…." He trailed off, unsure of himself for the hundredth time that morning.

"Going to what, Matt?" Mello's voice was dark, nearly back to its usual menace. "You can't do anything to me in that state, and you know it."

Matt was tired of being patronized. Christ, didn't Mello think he was capable of carrying out a threat at _all?_ Mello thought he was a cop-out. Matt squeezed Mello's arm and leaned in, mouth near to the blond's ear, so he could snarl an ultimatum that proved otherwise. "Never mind my state, Mello," he gritted, and now he was angry. "I think yours is worse, and if you don't cut the shit, I'll do whatever it takes to snap you out of it." Making his own threats felt good, and he remained a moment longer in Mello's personal bubble.

Mello inhaled — not quite a scared motion, barely imperceptible — and Matt only caught it because he was standing so close.

Oh Jesus, they were so _close_, and suddenly Matt remembered why he had woken up muddled in the first place. Mello was right next to him, submissive and frozen in what Matt swore was _tension,_ and damn his delirium, but he couldn't do this to himself right now. Layered, unexcavated desires were clawing up from a plot of earth that Matt didn't want to dig a shovel into. Not yet. Not on top of everything else.

Mello — for once — seemed to read Matt's thoughts and pay them heed. He yanked at his captive arm to break free of Matt's grip, and Matt let him go. Then Mello met Matt's gaze, deliberately, with an inquiry that knocked Matt wildly off balance.

"Matt. You get it now, don't you?"

…No.

No, Matt wasn't sure he got it at all. Shit, he didn't know what would hit him in the next half hour, never mind what Mello was trying to tell him that related to the state of their sorry lives. He needed to concentrate on what would restore him to health. A full English breakfast, for starters. Some black coffee. All his nightmares to end.

But he couldn't tear his eyes away from Mello's.

"Matt, this whole thing… and now, after last night and just a second ago, I can't…. We can't keep on like this, can't go where we're going." Mello paused, with a trace of lost dignity that vexed Matt further. "We can't afford to try to fix what you're saying has derailed, because I…."

Matt spun away in frustration. Sense… there was no _sense_ in the _jibberish_ that was leaving Mello's mouth. But half of it was Matt's own fault. If he hadn't gotten _plastered…._

Mello was still avoiding Matt's eyes, sliding his own between the door and his feet like he ached to flee the room.

"Fine," Matt allowed finally, raking a hand through his bed-besotted auburn locks. He retreated to the far side of his bed in surrender. There was nothing he could do just yet; he needed time to collect himself. "I don't fucking understand you, Mello, but do what you want."

There was a long pause before Mello spoke again.

"Clean up. Eat something. I'll be back in a few hours." And with that, Mello slipped past him. The breeze his exit created hit Matt's skin and left a chill.

No mercy, that Mello. No mercy at all.

Matt moved to watch from the balcony windows as Mello left through the front door. The blond slipped his sunglasses on, a sleek motion of habit — and one that screamed Hollywood. He headed off toward Waterloo Station, unopened bar of chocolate limp in one hand, and suddenly Matt was making a decision. He flew for his goggles and gloves.

He already had his boots on — he'd slept in them. His legs felt like lead and he probably should have found sneakers or something, but fuck if he had time for that. A clean shirt… he couldn't go out in his stinking, wrinkled—

Matt tore off one set of stripes in favor of another. Snapped his orange-tinted goggles onto his face — damn, it felt good to be safe behind those things again — and threw his vest over the whole ensemble. Gloves yanked on as well, he grabbed the second set of keys to the flat's front door and locked it behind him as he left. Stumbled down the steps outside, sunlight piercing his frontal lobe in protest. But Matt ignored it. He set off for Waterloo Station and the Underground.

Matt was going to have to pay for playing stalker on a hangover, but if he wanted to tail Mello then he didn't have time to take care of the details.

Perhaps he had to figure out Mello before he could figure out himself.

Matt nearly lost Mello in the tube station. Black, black… chic pea coats and dress pants, and Jesus, why did everyone have to wear so much black in winter? At last he located Mello — glint of chains disappearing into a front wagon on the Jubilee line. The doors were chiming a warning, about to close on loitering passengers, but Matt ducked behind a businessman and made it through unscathed.

He sought the handrail for balance and heaved a breath.

The train shuddered to a start. Mello was in the car ahead of him. Matt wasn't sure where the blond would get off, but it didn't matter. He knew damn well how to tail a man. It was ironic that now he used the talent to follow his own partner, but fuck if Matt would let that slow him down. This was surveillance. For Chrissake, Matt _ran_ their surveillance, so it was practically his _right_ to undergo this mission.

A girl in mousy pigtails watched him pick at the fur around his collar. He stilled his hands and scanned the mass of exiting bodies when the train grated to a halt at the next stop.

All he had to do was watch and wait.

--- x —

Matt breathed in the air of Regent's Park. It was a haven of grass and sculpted shrubbery, draping willow trees and footpaths lined with daffodils. Open, clear, and fresh. Might have even been doing Matt's headache some good to be out where the city smog couldn't infiltrate without a fight.

But what was Mello doing in the park?

Matt skidded to a halt as he rounded a bend and realized that Mello had stopped meandering. The hacker melted into a patch of shade to hide. They were beside a tendril of the manmade lake, surrounded by a copse of trees and just out of the path of the dog walkers and joggers. Matt adjusted his goggles and dug his chin into his chest. All cameras on — this was observation time. Mello braced an arm against a tree trunk; he didn't look like he was going anywhere, so Matt was content to lean against his own tree and stake him out.

If all went well, tailing Mello would lead Matt to answers. And if it didn't…. Well, at least spying on Mello was a middle finger to Mello's face after the command Matt had been given to remain at the flat. Oh, you didn't want me to leave my post? Well sorry, Lieutenant, I'm not your toy soldier.

Mello looked listless, resting there with a tilt to his hips like some sultry display mannequin. Matt combed his vision over each of Mello's fine details — the glint of his belt buckle in the sun's sharp rays, the dip between his shoulder blades, the silken way his hair fell across his sunglasses and aided in the concealment of his scar. God, there was something so enigmatic about Mello, and fuck if Matt had ever known what it was. He was content to simply observe, to note the exposed strip of flesh between Mello's waistline and the place his vest ended above his midriff. Showing his skin like an oversexed prom date.

Matt tried not to snort.

He followed the line of sight that Mello was pursuing. On the edge of the water, nestled in a coarse patch of grass… two black swans, serenely blinking back boredom as they watched the other waterfowl drift by on ripples. As if on cue, the male swan trumpeted at the other birds — a trill that rent the morning hush. Mello had a smirk on his face now. Matt didn't know what the blond found so humorous about the situation. He glanced back at the pair of swans.

He'd never liked swans. They arched their pretty necks and regarded the world like every bit of it was something… ugly. Like they were the only creatures worthy of making it beautiful.

Swans were a hell of a lot like Kira.

Now Mello had a slender hand on his hip, and he was pushing himself away from his tree. They were off again, Mello rounding a bend and crossing the cobbled red street into the inner circle of Regent's Park with Matt a safe distance behind.

Curiosity piqued Matt's interest, and his hangover seemed to dissipate the longer they walked. Mello picked up speed. His paces grew longer; Matt had to quicken his step to keep up. A rush of excitement was sweeping him like rain. He felt alive. This was a moment in his life that wasn't stagnant. The stakes had increased; he was out hunting. The blood coursed Matt's veins like a vital injection — and this moment of action was good.

Mello turned a corner without warning. Matt had to take the bend wide to avoid being seen in the blond's peripherals. Matt was still confident that Mello had no idea he was being followed. He zoned in on his quarry like a bloodhound. He had to _know_, damn it, had to know what was in Mello's head, because he wasn't getting any other answers, and maybe if he could map out Mello's insides like a blueprint he could interpret—

Mello was striding the more covered paths now, the ones in the far corner of Queen Mary's Gardens, and suddenly Matt grew wary of their positioning. Benches were screened by fronds of foliage, the paths were tucked and narrow. There was less space to maneuver in. It was harder to see up ahead. They crossed a little arched footbridge, cut around a babbling waterfall onto another path where—

Matt lost sight of Mello entirely.

Oh, _shit_. There was nothing but empty park in front of him.

Matt spun three hundred and sixty degrees. There was a neat little bench, but the blond wasn't crouched behind it. Shit, there was nowhere for Mello to _go_, other than into the stream or under the tendrils of ferns and flowers — neither of which were likely options. The stream was only ankle deep, and it would take a mole to dig far enough beneath the loam to hide. Matt squinted through his goggle lenses, wishing to hell that he had a cigarette.

If he could just calm down, just take a fucking minute to rethink Mello's meandering, to figure out where in Christ's name Mello had gotten to in such a short amount of time….

This had been _such_ a bad idea.

There was a golf ball lodged in Matt's throat; he couldn't swallow. If Mello had caught the scent of danger and began to craft a counterattack already, then it was too late for Matt to reckon with him. Too late to say, "Ha ha, it's only me. I snuck up on you," because if Matt knew Mello, Mello would take this threat seriously. Mello would be unstoppable. Oh fuck, _fuck_…. Bloody fuck. Mello could be _anywhere_, ready to drop down and raise hell on Matt and his brilliant ideas like the undead minions in Doom 3.

Matt spun around again, double-checking his blind spots. Still no Mello. But he didn't have to move, because Mello would come to _him._ Mello was probably watching him that very second, and even if he realized that it was _Matt_ who waited with bated breath and not some enemy, he would probably _still_ go ballistic just to teach Matt a lesson.

Oh god.

Holy _shit_, Matt was going to piss himself if it stayed this fucking quiet.

And that was why Mello had chosen this spot to corner him in, wasn't it? Because it was secluded. Because at that precise moment, no other people walked the vacant stretch of path. There _would_ be people soon — they could bumble in at any instant — but as of that immediate, horrific moment of clarity… there was no one to watch Matt go down. No one to see him snuck up on, stalked like the target he'd compared Mello to when it had been _him_ doing the hunting.

Oh Jesus, he was so fucking _petrified_.

It was almost liberation when the shadows churned behind him to spit Mello out like a juggernaut.

"_Shit—_"

Mello twisted Matt's arm up viciously, wrenched it behind Matt's back, and Matt swore that something ripped near his elbow. "Don't fucking move," Mello breathed, with all the psychotic stability of a sociopath with rabies.

Mello might as well have injected Matt with a poison dart in addition to abusing his limb, because Matt was paralyzed — absolutely fraught with terror. Not a muscle in him shifted, even as his brain was shrieking commands to cut and fucking _run_.

A very familiar gun barrel jammed itself beneath Matt's chin. Mello's body pressed against him from behind, and he skewed Matt's shoulder farther from its socket with his free hand. His voice hissed into Matt's ear again, a sigh low and sharp and oh so fatal.

"Oh Matt, you just couldn't sit still and work off that hangover like a normal person, could you?"

Mello had come down on him like a _hellhound_. And it occurred at last to Matt that… perhaps he had ticked Mello off, and had been pushing his luck all morning.

The gun was crammed beneath Matt's jaw and Matt panicked — panicked at the way that Mello began to stroke it along his pulse point, still breathing like a serial killer beside the sensitive shell of his ear. Oh Jesus, it was so damned perilous to do this _here_, in the middle of a public park, but Mello was livid with him and Matt didn't know what would be worse at that instant — to tell Mello to put the gun away or to make up an excuse for following him.

Instead, Matt summoned a bout of preternatural gall and said, "Nice day for a stroll in the park old bean, what?" His voice was hoarse.

Mello _laughed _at him, but there wasn't anything genuinely amused in the laugh at all. It was a rumble in the chest, one that Matt could feel from the way Mello stood latched onto him. Clinging, so close that the dark vibrations traveled through them both. It was the scariest sound Matt had ever heard in his life.

"Matt…." God, Mello was practically _singing_ it, like he found the torture of his own hacker gratifying. "Matt, did you come after me because you _wanted_ me to do this to you?"

_Do what?_ Matt wanted to ask. Did that mean this was only now getting started? But he gritted his teeth and said, "You'd like that, Mello, wouldn't you?" Christ, he didn't know where these balls of his were coming from.

Mello chose to ignore the taunt. "_Matt_." And damn it, Matt wished Mello would stop saying his name in such a wicked, raspy whisper. It was…. "I told you in the flat not to go digging into this. Wasn't last night enough for you?"

Mello stroked the gun down Matt's neck, scraped it across his collarbone, exhaled near Matt's ear and suddenly there was _pleasure_. Invading, obtruding _desire_ welling up inside Matt like a pressure valve about to burst. And that hand yanking him backward to expose him to every intrusive touch…. Matt caught fire.

Ah, _god_, and Mello knew what he was doing, didn't he? Mello knew _exactly_ what he was making Matt feel, because Mello understood Matt better than Matt understood himself. He knew that Matt had just been made to blur the lines between mortal fear and thrill, between pain and tainted pleasure. And he was exploiting it now, using it to punish Matt for toeing the boundary that had been forbidden. The boundary about the truth that he'd been warned they could not cross.

Well shit, the fences and trip wires weren't working. Matt still wanted to know.

And he was still hot with the wanton flames Mello had just lit beneath him.

Matt knew they were both treading over thin ice, but he couldn't help himself. The sensation of moist breath at his ear, the feeling of Mello holding him pinned…. To give in would be a narcotic so satisfying that it shot the nerves with ecstasy. And yet… Mello was an idiot — Mello was fucking _unhinged _in the head, and Matt wanted to toss him over the footbridge and hope he drowned in the little stream.

Irresolution stayed his temper. Matt let Mello hold him, let Mello continue to paint patterns on his skin with his weapon.

How had it come to this? Was Mello so determined to shut Matt out that he'd risk them both in a public display of intimidation? Matt wondered then if Mello was thinking about their plan, or if he was too busy trespassing Matt's personal space to care. Hell, otherworldly pain and pleasure combination or not, they were still in Regent's Park. They could still be spotted. Fat lot of good it'd do them to get caught by some constable before they could execute Takada's kidnapping. Matt smirked to himself. If the bobbies caught them, they'd be automatic criminals. And then they'd get knocked off by Kira, because that was Kira's job.

Gee, irony tickled.

What was Mello's motivation? Mello was certainly not stupid….

Mello pressed the gun harder into Matt's jaw line. "What's with the sudden lack of smart remarks? Something the matter?"

"Nothing," Matt said, and this time he was concentrating too hard to acknowledge the titillating roll in his gut when Mello's lips brushed his ear. "Just thinking about how funny it would be if one of those pigeons took a dump on you in the middle of your riot act." Matt jerked his head in the direction of the ratty grey birds on the back of the closest bench.

He didn't give a damn about pigeons. He'd just needed to divert the blond's attention, long enough to begin the organization of scattered information fragments. A picture formed slowly as the fragments fused together — one that drew an angry, resentful reaction inside Matt's consciousness. It smoldered, much like the fury in Mello's grip that intensified as he took in the pigeons. Mello was well and truly angry now, because Matt had broken the spell.

Matt silently congratulated himself. Then, "Let go of me, Mello." He wasn't scared any more. He had enough of the picture now to draw a conclusion.

He didn't fucking like what he saw.

He was slowly becoming enraged, because somewhere between his arm being twisted and his desire being roused, Matt had realized what it was that Mello was hiding from him. Maybe it was the desperation with which Mello's attack had been carried out, the way it mimicked the desperation that ricocheted around the bigger picture, because they didn't have time left to be anything _but_ desperate. Maybe it was Matt's fear of meeting his end at the nozzle of Mello's gun, and the way it had forced him to remember that his life was forfeit _anyway_, because he was really going to die chasing Kira. Maybe it was because he wasn't drunk anymore. But it grew clearer to Matt, as he stood with Mello plastered to his back and a gun at his throat. Mello had known what it meant to go down all along, and he hadn't helped Matt cope with it when Matt had asked him for direction.

Fuck if Matt knew why, but he really didn't like being slighted that way.

He spat through his teeth. "I said to _let me go_." Matt had always been open with Mello. Mello had no right to remain a closed book.

Shockingly, Mello relented. It must have been the bite in Matt's voice, because he flung Matt's arm down — as if he'd done it of his own volition and not because Matt had told him to. The gun's barrel disappeared into the top of his boot, while the handle that still protruded was covered over by his pant leg. Ah. A boot, stuffed with extra artillery in secret. No wonder Mello had been adjusting the laces that morning.

"Clever bastard, aren't you?" Matt asked with a wry twitch of his lips. He stood across the narrow path, as far from Mello as he could manage without looking hesitant. He wasn't scared anymore, but receding waves of fright left a jitter nonetheless.

"Don't try to banter with me right now, Matt," Mello said. He spun away, snappy as a whip-crack, and shot off between dappled spots of sunlight toward the main strip of park.

A few more steps, around the corner, and Matt couldn't see him any more.

* * *

_A/N: When I first wrote this chapter, I hated the way it came out. And I had to rewrite the thing. Twice, and both times before I even felt it was good enough to give my beta. But somehow, it turned into something decent. Therefore, I love my beta and you all should, too. (At least this was the only chapter in the whole story that gave me trouble, though.)_

_So, things are finally clicking for Matt, it seems. The pace is going to pick up. (It doesn't have much choice but to, does it?) What does everyone think thus far?_


	5. Schism

_A/N: Oh, _**Tobi Tortue**_, you horribly procrastinating beta reader, you. I luff you, but you have taken way too many months to get to this chapter. HEY, READERS — now you get to witness what I write like without the beta that has been my goddess for this fanfic. I'm effin' scared for my life. And I want helpful feedback._

_Anyway, expect the last chapters soon. I had contemplated keeping them a surprise from my beta anyway, so…. OH GOD I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL THE CHAPTER AFTER THIS ONE. (Mucho drooling, guys, trust me.) Peace out for now!_

_

* * *

_

**Schism**

He couldn't believe Matt had _followed him_, the nosy son of a bitch.

The door to the flat banged in Mello's wake as he blew through it; he didn't care. He slammed it again once he was clear, for the satisfaction of hearing it crash and shudder like a collapsing wood shed.

Mello supposed he should have been embarrassed for not noticing the hacker's tailing sooner, but in truth, he felt far from humiliated. He'd almost taken pleasure in the way Matt had stalked him through the park, and then provided the supreme satisfaction of a turn-around when he'd slipped up and gotten caught. Mello had _enjoyed_ their power game once Matt was captive. The way Matt's Adam's apple had dipped when Mello forced his head back with his gun barrel, the way he'd stiffened when Mello hissed low and menacing into his ear…. It was intoxicating. For a few precious moments, Matt had submitted like white paper to finger paint, and Mello had smeared him the color of agitation. When Matt had shuddered, Mello had felt himself grow warm. He knew his satisfaction wasn't real, knew it was a mirage fabricated by wicked wishes and a mind that took everything to sinful levels, but even so, it still meant that….

Matt had made Mello lose control, and vice versa. Mello had fallen prey to attraction. Matt had submitted to his temper.

Neither of them could afford such a mishap. Mello bit his lip. This was his biggest fuck up yet. No matter which way he examined their situation, it looked like he was going to take Matt down with him — even though he had sworn not to. Despite his solemn pledge inside the cathedral, Mello was letting temptation swallow him whole. And Matt, too — was Matt also cracking under pressure? Giving in to impulses that were better off suppressed? His lip felt swollen, but he continued to bite it.

They would just have to harden their resolution.

_Damn_ it.

Mello moved from the hallway to the living room, resisting the urge to act violently on his irritation. Damn Matt for tailing him in Regent's Park! Damn Matt for being something so fucking ethereal and beautiful. Damn him for having the gall to confront Mello twice in less than twenty-four hours, and for surviving after that because Mello was too weak to punish him with a bullet to the head. Mello passed by his armchair and onward, boots clomping. He should have been quieter when he'd woken that morning, should have taken off before Matt was roused by his stirring. Then it never would have happened. Christ, _Matt_ — waking up in the bed next to his, hair ruffled and looking like he'd had a night of wild philandering. Rolling over with his boots still on, rubbing his eyes and fixing Mello with a muddled morning squint that was endearing and pathetic and typical Matt all over.

Fuck, Mello needed a drink. But he wasn't that stupid. He went for the chocolate in the kitchen instead — tore it from the stash on the countertop to sink his teeth into a fresh bar with vampiric lust.

It hit his tongue.

Instantaneous, bittersweet gratification. Sugary shield of sedation and sanctuary. But more importantly… composure.

That was when Mello saw the blip cross Matt's computer screen. He eyed it from a distance, gazing from the kitchen to the living room floor on which it claimed territory. Matt's screensaver was on, a Gothic J flickering to and fro — because Mello had already pilfered the letter M. It was dangerous, to use a letter from your real name as an emblem, but Matt had been screwed from the start. Matt… and Mail. Which, on second thought, didn't exactly matter, because Mello and Near had chosen pseudonyms that matched their real names in the first letter as well. Maybe they'd all liked the risk in it. Mello had come before Matt on Wammy's ranking list, and therefore had won priority over their emblem letter in the alphabet. So Matt's second pick — a J for _Jeevas_, and equally as risky as M or N — wasn't that unusual after all.

The J bounded around the screen, telling Mello to be J-J-Jolly in intervals of every fifteen seconds, when it winked and danced and flickered. _Jolly_ was Matt's favorite online alias, short for _jolly_roger_, a cheap allusion to some pirate game Matt had played as a kid…. Mello snapped a square off his chocolate, staring at the bold letter like it was extraterrestrial. Fucking annoying, that screensaver. And since when did Matt leave his main laptop in a state of limbo? His machine was usually running a series of programs or simulations; it didn't matter where Matt was or what hour the clock read.

Mello's curiosity had been piqued. He neared the laptop, eyes hooded in suspicion. It wasn't as if Matt's files were private. Matt was his hacker, so anything that was documented in them involved Mello in due course. If Matt _did_ have private files, fine. Let him guard his porn stash. Mello wouldn't be able to get past his passwords and encryptions anyway. But he _could_ at least figure out what had made Matt careless enough to leave his equipment lying prone. Maybe he'd investigate — poke around to get back at Matt for the park escapade that had made him feel susceptible to his rank human passion.

He put his chocolate down beside the keyboard and began to peel off his gloves. They were skin-tight leather, the thinnest, smoothest hide — shiny, but worn, and stained with melted chocolate. He could type in them well enough, but somehow it seemed fairer to remove them. He'd never touched Matt's equipment without permission. He'd never had the desire to touch it at all, come to think of it, because Matt was deft enough to work without another's assistance. As Mello laid his hands over the laptop, he felt a dash of impunity. Matt would never know that his prized possession had been explored in his absence. Mello was invading a privacy that Matt had always taken for granted, and it filled him with a sense of defiance.

He tapped the space bar. The screensaver vanished.

Nothing of immediate suspicion appeared on the desktop, and Mello found he was almost disappointed. He clicked around aimlessly, first through Matt's custom firewalls and system blocks, then through his collection of games and other boredom-killing applications. Incredible. If Matt had time enough to play sixty-seven different games and design applications for download via file-sharing, he was even more adept at hacking than Mello had assumed. Of course, it wasn't surprising that Matt had grown — enhanced his databases and perfected every program that his genius brain had ever explored. It was just that, well….

Mello hadn't been around to watch Matt learn and advance. Something in that felt like a cop out, even if Mello had abandoned Wammy's for the sake of L. Putting Matt in his rearview mirror, stranding him there alone, forcing him to find his way out by himself after all the things they had gone through as a pair…. Maybe if Mello had stayed, things would have been different.

The screen blurred a little in his vision, and Mello realized that he was no longer focusing on what it displayed. He blinked. It was too late to think of the past. They'd readjusted to each other little by little after Mello came back. Matt had changed, and so had Mello, but somehow they had been able to cope. Matt had never asked why Mello had gone, and he hadn't needed to — there'd been an understanding there that Mello felt he'd never deserved. He was grateful for Matt's acceptance and help. Together they'd pulled off a long string of wonders… and they'd see everything through to the last again now. That was why Mello had been working so hard to keep up their morale. Matt deserved peace of mind for his ability to forgive and forget. It was their _current_ relationship that Mello wanted to protect, because they'd worked too hard getting there to let it crumble courtesy of death-bed desperation….

Mello clicked the folder that held the data from their latest negotiations. Recordings of phone conversations with Hal, charts that plotted Kira's recent murders, all the information they'd gleaned from Matt's surveillance and whatever Near had let slip. Lists of Mello's mafia contacts, maps with tracking routes, press articles linking the Japanese Taskforce to the raid on the building that Mello had set aflame the day he'd earned his scar. All of it lurked under secure lock and key on Matt's hard drive, and was backed up on several other hidden servers. The entire network would shut itself down and send signals to self-destruct all linked computers if anyone ever managed to break Matt's defenses. And Matt had left his computer vulnerable. Maybe he knew that Mello wouldn't tinker with anything questionable. But then again, it wasn't like Matt to leave that up to chance, no matter how much he trusted in Mello.

When Mello double-clicked the first file, the screen blipped and an error message sounded. He frowned. The document had opened — he could see the information behind the pop-up window — so what was the error code for? He narrowed his eyes and scanned the message, irritated. Then he froze.

It wasn't an error number. It was an alert, a reminder. It was what the alert _said_ that turned Mello's chocolate ashy on his tongue.

_Dead File._

His fingers hesitated over the track pad. It had to be a mistake. He clicked the next document on Matt's list, and it opened, but the same alert popped up. It was a label, a warning — telling Mello that the files were tainted in a way he simply couldn't stomach. A 'dead file' was the technical label for a file that had been closed, but that was kept in a back-log for legal or financial reasons. It meant that all investigation was over, that no new information would be added. A futureless stash of data. It meant the documents were retired, forgotten — one step up from being laid to waste. It was too coincidental to be an error; it was too ironic. _Dead File._

Mello's fingers shook as he did a mass select and opened all files at once, straining to battle back the panic that was rising in his gut. And that was the only word for it, as message after message sprung up like daises in front of his vision. _Panic_ — nightmarish, petrifying, white-knuckled panic.

Mello didn't want to look at those two words. He didn't want to acknowledge their meaning, but the significance pummeled his brain like so many hammers. His breathing came labored and the panic gripped him harder.

He pounded blindly at the keys, checked Matt's older files, swept through every folder that was tied to them and all their labors. But the same words swam across the pages, searing him with white-hot tongs of opposition.

DEAD FILE DEAD FILE DEAD FILE DEAD FILE

Mello wrenched his eyes away. No, _no_, it couldn't be. Matt… when had Matt done this? A dragon of remorse wrapped claws around Mello's insides, seared his eyes with smoky breath. This was _his_ fault. If anyone had driven Matt to such fevered, desperate actions….

DEAD FILE DEAD FILE DEAD FILE DEAD FILE

He couldn't stand to look at it anymore. It was a mutiny as much as it was Matt's attempt at vindication. The past twenty-four hours had left Matt ruined, a mess of unanswered questions and profound disquiet. Mello felt a shudder take him as he further solidified in his mind the point at which it must have happened. Last night, when he'd left Matt in the bathroom. Last night, when Matt had asked him for the truth and Mello had denied him it. Matt's response had been to give in to his frustration, to admit his defeat with an attitude, to crash and burn and leave a bitter parting message across all the information they'd ever collected: Dead File. It was a middle finger to the world; it was an accusation and a prediction. He and Mello would die, and all that they had ever done — all that they had ever known — would be thrown on someone's backburner while they rotted in the underworld. _If _they were lucky. _If _the files didn't disintegrate into cyberspace thanks to one of Matt's security measures.

Matt had figured out that he and Mello existed as crutches to help Near reach the top, and that if all went well, the Wammy House golden boy would finish the job they gave their lives to start. Mello had known it too, but he'd never had the balls to confront it like this.

Matt had. And Matt had served it à la carte with a twist of irony and the morose.

Mello's fist crashed down beside the laptop. "Sh-shit…."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Matt wasn't supposed to feel like these two days were their requiem. They weren't dead _yet_, damn it. They were damned, and they were going down. They were standing smack under the Reaper's scythe, but they were still breathing. Still existing, as precarious an existence as it was proving to be. And wasn't that something to hold on to, for as long as possible?

Fuck if he would admit to it on record, but Mello had his moments of optimism. He couldn't have survived his own life without them. He'd clung to that optimism and hoped for something painless for Matt, even forfeited his own emotions to avoid hampering tranquility. Matt was supposed to go down with a smile on his face, with a look that said he would walk into a hail of arrows and balefire without flinching — just so he could stick it to the system as he died. But Matt had lost himself somewhere, lost his sense of certainty and his boldness, and it was all Mello's fault. Because Mello had slipped up. He'd underestimated Matt terribly. He'd convinced himself that a refusal to explain their circumstances would be enough to keep Matt from reasoning out their deaths on his own, from coming to the harsh conclusions that Mello had already grasped. Now Matt was floundering in the whirlpool that Mello had tried to protect him from… with no life vest in sight.

Mello had failed.

His eyes burned. His hands twitched over Matt's keyboard, useless and limp like wet newspaper. Torn as he was, he was also rent with a fury that he couldn't explain. Fury at Matt, or fury at something larger, he didn't know. This… this was like a bruise to his essential organs. This would seep through every vein until he was sapped of all things vital, this horrible, frightening contusion of self-reproach. Matt couldn't be fretting to such a degree; Mello didn't want to believe it. It ripped him apart, like a hook unzipping his soul from the top down. It _hurt_. To think that Matt had suffered something so much worse than expected and been sick from cloves and tequila to boot! Mello didn't know how in seven hells he was going to make it up to him. He sought his gloves to hide the sight of his trembling hands, and then removed himself from the laptop's vicinity. He walked to his armchair, considering it without sitting down.

Such a pair of fine specimens they made. They _both_ wavered on the brink now, barely clinging to the cliff's edge… and what was left for them in the time they had?

Their lives had become a dead file after all.

Mello chewed his lip. Could he postpone the consequences of his actions? He couldn't let Matt's thread of sanity fray further; there were things they had yet to do. There was one thing that might keep them from tumbling headfirst into the void ahead of schedule, but it all rested on Matt's keen perception. Gingerly, he sat down in his chair.

If Mello could live with the weight of the futures they were throwing away, then perhaps Matt could too. If Matt could focus on accepting his fate and nothing else, it would be enough to move them toward destruction calmly. They'd endure, because… as long as Matt didn't find out about Mello's desire for him, they had a fighting chance.

That was where the fulcrum rested. On Mello's desire for Matt — Mail Jeevas, the playmate he'd known all his childhood, who'd taken the pseudonym Matt as testimony to his cause. Matt, who had gotten under his skin and turned Mello into everything he was. No matter how attuned to their situation Matt became, as long as he stayed ignorant of Mello's feelings… they had half a chance. Because after this… Mello didn't know what Matt felt. He didn't want to think of possibilities, didn't want to acknowledge the changes that he'd picked up in Matt's attitude just that morning. God, he hated himself for allowing himself to hope for it, and yet….

If there was something there, something that Matt felt for Mello too, small and inconsequential as it may be… it would ruin them. It was better not to know. It was what Mello had meant that morning when he'd told Matt that it wasn't safe to go there. They could handle devastation; they could handle being robbed of their futures and they could stomach remorse, but they couldn't handle loss of such high caliber. Suppose Mello _were _to have his deathbed wish granted? To be allowed to hold onto Matt — once, just _once_, because once was all they had time for…. If Mello were to lose Matt so soon after being allowed such a chance…. That was punishment worse than death.

…Or maybe it was just Hell, in which case, he _did_ deserve it.

But Matt didn't. So Mello would protect Matt from it.

Mello returned Matt's laptop to its screensaver mode, his cathedral promise solidified once more. Dead file or not, they were still alive, and Mello would have to keep those lives bearable.

— x —

Matt's behind was cold from sitting on the ground, but he wasn't going to move yet. Not until he'd reworked every detail of what had happened by that bench, on that path when Mello's gun had been prodding at his jaw. The delicious pressure when Mello had slid the barrel across his pulse… that hot breath, ragged by his ear, the feel of Mello pressed against him from behind….

Shit. Now he had to start thinking all over again.

_To hell with the horny details_, he wanted to berate himself. This was more serious than that. Fuck, Matt needed to get a grip, because if he couldn't pull himself together soon, there would be hell to pay. He hadn't had a damned cigarette all day…. At least he'd eaten. He'd risked a cash machine to withdraw an unassuming, twenty-pound banknote — bought himself drink and a sandwich or three at the nearest Tesco. They were shrink-wrapped little things, those sandwiches, around two pounds a pop, so he'd stocked up, and he'd kept the change this time. Never knew when it might come in handy. Opera tickets and the like.

He'd carried the sandwiches back to Regent's Park and eaten them rather mechanically. He'd thought about eating them far, far away from the gardens where Mello had assaulted him — contemplated a trek to the opposite side entirely, where kids his age played football in the fields and the free-wandering wildlife wasn't quite so prevalent. Way down on the other side near the zoo, maybe on the edge opposite St. Mark's church, as far as he could get from the place where he'd been breached by Mello's incessant provocation. But instead… Matt had settled on a spot not far from where the incident had occurred, on the grass underneath a willow by the water.

Couldn't kill him to replay the scene on site and figure out where things had gone wrong.

Matt eyed the squirrel that was scampering past his feet. Its nose twitched, its tail fluttered like a banner, and it scurried up the willow's bark as if the bark were a ladder. Matt wondered where the hell Mello had come from to attack him. He hadn't thought of Mello climbing trees. Maybe he was nimble like a squirrel.

Somehow, Matt didn't think Mello could have managed it in all the leather. And god, that leather.

Matt closed a gloved grip over his throbbing arm and squeezed until it throbbed some more. Focus-keeping tactic number one: Pain equals PAY ATTENTION. Matt released the injured limb. Jesus, leave it to someone psychotic like Mello to practically _cripple_ his good arm. What the hell had Mello been _thinking?_ A lame Matt was a useless Matt; a useless Matt was no good for maneuvering vehicles and shooting smoke bombs into crowds of Kira supporters. Mello _needed_ him, damn it, so what in God's name had possessed him to rip Matt's arm to shreds? Matt moved the feeble limb again, extended it experimentally. It didn't hurt _unbearably_ at least, when he concentrated on what pain there was. He'd be fine. God, sometimes he could be such a pussy. Maybe _that_ was why Mello had treated him like a bitch.

…He was spewing nonsense again.

And the more nonsense Matt spewed, the longer it would take him to get his ass back to the flat. Because he wasn't going until he had his answers.

Matt had most of them already. It was simple enough. Maybe he'd finally detached himself; maybe at last he'd given up caring, and the objectivity had granted him coherence.

The reason he'd felt so haunted at Wammy's the day before was because his subconscious had been trying to tell him something. Childhood memories had triggered an awareness in his adult mind. Eventually, Matt's subconscious had fully released the secret, and Mello's actions had probably helped. What it came down to… was that they were wasting their lives. They had started out thinking they had nothing to lose, but the god damned truth was that they had _everything_ at stake.

And ew. They were leaving _Near_ to settle their score once they were gone. That bastard would finish the job and make them look incompetent.

The cold seeped into the seat of Matt's pants even more; he shifted and counted ripples on the water's surface to calm himself. His sentiments about Near aside… it had been foolish to decide to go down. Mello had recognized the bad choice first, and he'd tried to hide it from Matt to save Matt the agony of knowing. Mello hadn't wanted Matt to think about wasted years and lost futures — probably to save Matt's sanity. So Mello had borne the hefty price of their kidnapping plot alone. It didn't matter that they'd thought it through. Didn't matter that they were doing it for a damn good reason. The coup they'd planned was stupid, and Matt knew that now, just like Mello did.

The problem was that neither of them would change their minds.

Matt flopped over on his back, gazing at the pale willow strands through the lenses of his goggles. He couldn't remember the weather in London ever being this nice. It was nice a lot, he knew, but in his memories from Wammy's, all of England had been stark and grey, so that was how he remembered it now. Drizzle, fog, and rain. The only bright ray in his past had been Mello.

Today he was doubly blessed, because he still had Mello and he had the sun, too. Lying in the park was a refreshing sort of bliss.

But even if Matt could have reclined in a park in London every day of his life for years to come, he would never have chosen to. No — he was going to go down, because it was too late to reverse gears.

That was where he and Mello currently balanced. They were on a brink, teetering at the edges of the pit that was their coup d'état. They were flailing — it was only natural and human to do so. But suppose they were offered a set of hands to pull them to safety? Neither Matt nor Mello would clasp those hands and be rescued. Maybe it all had to do with pride.

Matt sat up again, resuming the counting of ripples on the water.

Maybe they were just stubborn. It wasn't impossible to walk away from Near and the SPK, to flip a finger to Kira and his "kingdom" and escape somewhere to enjoy their lives. Especially since it was a matter of survival. Anyone else might have chosen to abandon the masses in favor of their own desire to exist and thrive.

But Matt and Mello weren't anyone. They were different, and they were the only two people desperate enough, _insane_ enough, close enough to the web of main players to see the bloodshed through. It was them or nobody. Matt was smart enough to know that it couldn't be nobody.

He felt a sense of duty, of priority. Even when he reflected on the future he was dismissing… Matt knew that it was worth it. He intended to finish what he and Mello had started — foolish decision or not — because Kira was a morally misguided motherfucker, and he was fucking with their world. And maybe, in the end, the world was a greater thing than Matt's own existence, greater and more resilient than the toy Kira took it for. What was a single life, anyway? Rather than living his out in leisurely, accumulating increments of growth and experience, Matt was choosing to blow all his worth in one shot. It didn't much matter, because life amounted to the same level of meaning in the end. So why not blot himself out now, if it made no difference? Why not use his life to better the lives of the people to whom reaching retirement and having kids _did_ matter? Matt lived on the edge anyway. Got his paychecks on Fridays and spent them Saturday nights, as the saying went. That was the way Matt had _always_ lived, and Mello too, so that was the way they would die. He had no qualms left on the subject.

But there was a twist of lemon in their recipe for retribution, and Mello had been the one to sour the mix with it. Yes, Matt had pieced all of _that_ together too, and it was good that he was finally spreading it bare in his head without derailing his train of mental cargo. Maybe now he could get up and go home instead of picking at the grass.

Mello had wanted Matt all along. God, the explanation filled the gaps to fit _everything_, and Matt really should have seen it sooner. It was why Mello was so on-edge, why Mello had gone to such pains to shield Matt from their sad reality. He'd cared for Matt more than Matt had known.

But Matt knew _now_. And shit, maybe it was because he felt the same way. That sure would provide an answer for the thrill with which he'd shivered under Mello's fingertips, the way he'd choked on his own breath seeing Mello in a state of undress that morning. Christ, it was so _complicated_.

Matt broke off from his thoughts for a precious instant — he couldn't afford to get angry again. He was already halfway to livid, but if he still had a chance of stopping his temper, he would try.

There were ducks on the water in front of him, ducks on the shore. Matt thought again of Mello's swans. And he'd seen herons and all sorts of odd, quirky birds. Quite the range of waterfowl in Regent's Park.

Jesus, he was contemplating waterfowl when his heart was on the line.

Matt wanted to kick a duck to exude his frustration.

The truth was that it hurt. Matt didn't like the tactics Mello had chosen. Fuck, who was he kidding? He _hated_ Mello for the way that Mello had handled things. Matt tried to put himself in Mello's shoes. Mello had only done it because he'd thought it was best. To add emotions to their predicament — ones that flowed deeper than the river Thames — when they were already this far into Hell…. It was more pain than any two people should ever be required to bear.

But Matt still resented Mello's deceit. His urge to kick a duck in retribution increased. He'd kick them _all_ if he had to, until he didn't feel like he'd been cheated. One feathery lump set sailing for the way Mello had manipulated him. Another ducky entrée punted to take the blow for Mello's cowardice. Maybe blast the last duck with a rocket launcher just to prove that his righteous anger gave him power over Mello.

God damn it, Mello had skewed what they could have been by keeping his mouth shut. Matt was a good listener; he would have heard Mello out at the first sign of distress. Okay, so he wouldn't have liked to learn that another guy wanted to bang him — that was a given — but he would have zipped his lip long enough to let Mello vent. Hell, maybe a confession from Mello — "By the way Matt, I have wet dreams about you" — would have helped Matt's own sentiments along. They could have _done_ something about it. Matt didn't know what, and maybe they wouldn't have had enough time to work it out, but at least the idea would have been _out there_. Up in the air like a Frisbee waiting to come down. But no, Mello had kept clammed up like a mollusk — for Matt's sake, Matt knew, but it didn't ease his indignation much.

They were two different minds when everything was whittled down to these final stakes. Matt had come to grips with things differently; he weighed on different scales when he measured what mattered. Mello seemed glued to his stupid resolution, and Matt didn't agree with it, not entirely, not when it came to feelings like this, and _shit_, he didn't know, damn it he didn't _know_ what he wanted or which way he thought was better — not to love at all or to love and then lose.

His backside had long gone numb with cold, but he got up and stomped the grass and dirt off his boot soles, incensed. He felt pathetic, and he didn't know what the hell he was going to do about it. Something urgent was telling him to melt Mello's iron, to make him see reason. It didn't feel plausible, not with them both already sitting in the skillet, waiting to jump from there to the fire. He didn't know how to break Mello down without _breaking him down_, but damn it, Matt was piss fucking livid and he had to try.

If he didn't, it really _would_ be too late to recompense.


	6. Bridges Burned

**Bridges Burned  
**

When the door banged open to reveal a mutinous-looking Matt, Mello was ready.

He'd been pacing for the last hour, waiting for Matt to return from the park, though he hadn't known where the hell he would start when Matt arrived. He was tempted to let Matt move first, whether or not the decision was wise.

Matt was certainly moving. Storming at him, more like.

Mello knew he was vulnerable — the Apocalypse he'd just witnessed on Matt's hard drive had rendered him incapable of systematic thought. He hardly protested when Matt yanked off his gloves, coiled his arm back and delivered a blinding punch to the side of his face.

It hurt. Mello's whole upper half twisted in repercussion. He let the hit fester; he let it penetrate him to the soles of his boots. The blow knocked him back into the realm of the tangible. It jerked him away from the image of his life as a forgotten document on someone's desktop.

Ah… Matt wanted a fight?

Mello retaliated.

It was automatic; it was all he had left after the wretched, empty feeling that had penetrated him through the laptop like a virus. He snarled and dove for the hacker. Matt was ready; he blocked the first hit, but Mello was a seasoned mafia headman, and he was going to leave Matt broken. His second blow connected. Matt swore, floored. He swiped his knuckles across the corner of his mouth where Mello had nailed him. Mello realized the hacker had been babying his twisted arm, but even guilt didn't make him merciful. He looked into Matt's eyes when Matt tore his goggles off to clear his view, and knew instinctively that Matt didn't _want_ him to be merciful. He inhaled.

Mello would fight Matt until one of them fell unconscious, if that was what Matt wanted, but he'd do it on his own terms. Lord knew it would provide him with an outlet for his rage. The alert lock on Matt's computer, the stream of expired files…. Now Matt was fighting him, and Matt was going to pay for it if Mello had to tear him apart with his fingernails.

"Nice hit." Matt was standing now, stretching his jaw back and forth to make sure it wasn't damaged. "But if anyone deserves to get the shit beaten out of them, it's you, Mello."

"Like hell I'll let you get that far," Mello hissed, legs tensing as he watched Matt breathe. He should have asked Matt why he was angry — whether it was the park encounter or something else — but Mello's ability to make inquiries had dissolved along with all remnants of his logic. Outrage dispatched smaller doubts.

Matt seemed to be weighing his options. Then he took the distance between them in four measured steps, stopping only when Mello could count his eyelashes. Mello waited, sure that he'd be able to counter any strike his opponent might make. "Hit me again, Matt. Go ahead, try it. You're nothing but the candle flame, and I'm the gust of wind."

Matt's hand shot out with the speed of a bullet train.

Fingers ripped at the roots of blond hair, forced Mello's head back as Matt wrenched the strands viciously and drove Mello to suck in air through his teeth. "Mello, I don't know why you think it's okay to patronize me at a time like this." The statement was accompanied by another ruthless tug.

His _hair_, for Chrissake.

Mello snarled. What a cheap move to execute. Fuck if he would let Matt act this authoritative.

"Take your hands off me. I don't need an excuse to wreck you." Mello meant every word. He was thoroughly incensed now — justified or unjustified, Kira's raving world or not, this was too ludicrous. Mello didn't _really_ want to fight with Matt, not now, not after reading what was on that hard drive. But engaging in a brawl seemed the only immediate solution. There wouldn't have to be a verbal confrontation if one of them was out cold on the floor. Mello tried again to yank himself free of the hacker's grip, but to no avail.

He lifted an arm in the space between them and whipped Matt across the jaw with a backhand. Matt's head snapped to the side, but irritatingly enough, he maintained his hold on Mello's hair.

Matt turned his head to face front again after taking the hit, slowly, ever so slowly, and his eyes rose to fix on Mello's.

"God damn it, Mello — you aren't some sort of Doomsday Executive." His gaze flickered.

Something happened then — something that Mello would never be able to explain.

The hand that Matt was using to hold him melted, his grip slackening. Mello's heart went renegade. Matt's assault became a caress as fingertips slipped softly through his hair, then in one fluid, supple motion, Matt leaned in and delivered the swoop that ended their battle.

Their lips collided in an act of surrender, and _Christ_, how Mello had burned for it.

He released a moan from somewhere deep inside himself when he felt pressure on his mouth. Matt's lips were smooth and commanding. It had happened so fast, and what had they been arguing about again? Mother Mary, Matt was _kissing_ him, swiping a tongue across his lips. He took without hesitation when Mello parted them to let him taste the desire there. And Matt tasted it, because he tilted Mello's head back and kissed him harder. Mello let his eyes drift closed.

The kiss was something raw and drastic. It was an apology, it was an excuse, an experiment, but it was everything that Mello had been aching for. It was rough and imploring and distinctly _arousing_, even if Mello didn't know what had possessed Matt to start it. It eased logical thought aside too sweetly for Mello to want to question it. And it didn't stop.

They fumbled toward the nearest open wall for support; Mello's breathing grew ragged as hands began to wander and heat began to pool between them. What the hell was going on? Damn, this had happened because Mello had let his guard down. This unholy communion of Matt's pliant mouth and his, this submission to his rampant lust, too long gone unslaked… this was perilous. Something had crumbled, and Mello didn't know what it was. Shit, Matt was going to know — he was going to _know_, he was going to feel Mello's pent up desire turning loose — but the alarm bells weren't doing anything to slow them down. Matt moved willingly when Mello hauled his body closer, and to his terror, Mello found he didn't _care_ about the status of his broken resolution. Let them clash in a maelstrom of iniquity; let them go to Hell for this, as long as Matt kept trailing fingers along his scalp and invading his mouth with that tongue that slipped inside and curled with wild impulses….

Matt shifted to corrupt his neck next, and Mello groaned, breathless. "You… have you lost your _sanity?_" The knot of pleasure that was building in his stomach was a one-way ticket to a blazing ruin, and Mello was going to want to kill them both when it was over.

"I want this," Matt rasped. "Let this happen."

Mello moved as if to press on Matt's shoulders and force the hacker away, but his mind wouldn't send the proper signals. He couldn't stop it anymore, not when Matt bit down to tempt him, not when Mello thirsted for Matt to abandon convention and take him down on the floor, where they'd be closer to the Hell that was waiting for them and blasphemy would add to the high. Matt kept up the routine at Mello's neck, twirled and stroked his tongue in zigzags along the most sensitive parts of his skin. Instead of pushing Matt away, Mello found himself guiding him closer. Shit, he wanted _more_ of it. And then there were teeth, nipping along his pulse point.

His fingers fisted in Matt's shirtfront and he choked on a gasp. "Matt — ah, _god_…."

Matt slowed only long enough to groan, "Don't call for God. Third party not welcome at present."

God wouldn't have been able to help them anyway, Mello decided, as Matt scraped more teeth behind his ear and fumbled with the zipper on Mello's vest. Mello couldn't breathe — he was burning, writhing, collapsing with the weight of the _wanting_ that tore from him in waves. His fingers trembled and he moved his grip to Matt's hips.

When Matt slid a hand beneath the leather of his vest, something in Mello lost all control and flew free like an impounded phoenix. Fingers clawed across his bare skin in a manner that was unabashedly carnal, and feeling outran reason.

If this was Hell, Mello would volunteer to blaze until eternity ended.

Matt pressed his hips forward when Mello tugged hard on them, so that both of them were brought together in a whirl of wanton energy. Mello bit back a cry that would have become a shameless beg, had he only dared let it loose. Matt set free a noise of his own. It was a sound that Mello had not known Matt could make, a deep, purring rumble, and it drove Mello to frenzy with its neediness and its honesty. Matt was wild with something that came from a place undisclosed, hot and trembling with the passion that flew between them seemingly unexplained. It controlled them like a computer command, that lustful earnestness — straightforward in its direction and execution and yet supremely complicated behind the programming. Mello didn't know what Matt wanted, but he knew it begot something violent and desperate. The sound had echoed somewhere between a growl of impatience and a moan that embellished his longing. Mello knew at once that contact had to stop, or they'd careen away into drugged, senseless gratification.

He tried again to tell his limbs to resist further progress, but there was a vacuum sucking the air from between their bodies, moving them closer together as if their yearning were a black hole.

"We…" Mello's body was weak with Matt's expertise. "We can't do— _shit _Matt, we can't _do_ this." But Mello's insides were churning exquisitely, and his body said he needed more. Said he would allow it, or he would die unsatisfied.

Matt's responding murmur was feverish. "Tell me—" Lick. "—that you didn't—" Slide. "—just say that." Sweet succumbing explosion. Mello failed to feel the floor when the hacker grabbed his waist and closed his mouth around his earlobe.

"Ah— ahhn, Matt! _Matt_, damn it, I…." His hands were moving of their own volition. His back was arching into Matt's hedonistic touches. Mello's body was an ember; Matt was the spark that coaxed it into brighter life. Mello would burn with this longing until he was spent, the ember that he was turned to ash, extinguished. Matt's fingers found the laces of his leather pants — tugged at them in an urgent entreaty — and Mello lifted into the motion before he could stop himself. Oh god, Matt's hands on him, taking the invitation and massaging from the other side of the leather, the movement becoming Mello's gently stroking restitution after he had been so neglected… this ecstasy, this delicious indulgence… Matt's expert overtures would be the fiery, flaming death of him. He'd fall like an angel to the realm of the mortal at the edict of his rapture.

Matt would make him human, and they had to play gods.

Mello shoved Matt away with shaking arms, at last breaking free of his hunger. His lips were tingling; they lingered with the potency of Matt's corrupting kiss. He panted for breath, sidestepping to avoid any attempts at resuming their contact.

He didn't need to say anything. His action had been so abrupt that it jarred Matt into hesitation.

"Mello…" Matt searched his face. Then the hacker found his fears in Mello's silence; Mello knew it when something in those hazel-green eyes sharpened. "_Mello_." This time Mello's name was a gunshot. "Tell me why you stopped us."

The_ why_ was too complex just then. "Don't ask me to explain, Matt. Don't."

"Because you won't, or because you can't?" Ah yes, Matt definitely knew everything now, judging by that staccato tone. He wasn't going to settle for a brush-off. Mello cursed himself as the hacker continued. "You can't honestly tell me that _this_… that even after we… fuck, Mello, do you realize that we just very nearly let ourselves have what…. And you won't acknowledge what any of it means. Are you really that—"

"What, Matt? That dense? That _stupid_?" Mello still ached for Matt to lay hands on him; he didn't want to pay for his decision just yet. Please God, not yet. "Don't turn this into a jigsaw puzzle that you can't solve. You can't even _begin_ to think that you know the reason for—"

"You and your bull-fucking-_shit_, Mello!" Matt cut him short with a shrill shout. "I'm finally beginning to understand everything, but I… I'm not sure I can battle against it when we're this close and still win. I want what I want, and I might not have the strength to hold out any more for the sake of everyone else. Part of me thinks we shouldn't even _try_ to deny this from ourselves."

Mello released a humorless laugh. "Then maybe _that's_ why I stopped us."

Matt flexed his hands; his whole body screamed of a battle between logic and instinct. "How do you know your solution isn't _wrong_, damn it?" A split second later, instinct won and Mello sensed it. Matt moved as if to seize him again, but Mello eyed the peg on the wall beside them.

He pulled his gun from the holster that hung ready there — the quickest decision he'd made in his life. Quicker even than the choice that had cost him half his facial features.

Matt froze when the barrel found his forehead.

"I'm not wrong, Matt." The gun felt too natural in Mello's grip. "I know I wasn't making it easy either, but if this is the only way we can keep our hands off each other, then I have no problem shooting you." He paused. Then, lowering his eyes but not his weapon, "I probably should have done so a long time ago."

Matt held still for a moment, working his tongue around the inside of his mouth in preparation to speak. Mello wanted to take that mouth and tongue back, to drag Matt into another hard kiss by the nape of his neck. "Y-you _do_ know how ridiculous you make us sound?" Matt asked finally, and Mello barely heard him over the whispers of wicked desire that still wisped across his mind.

"I know that," he snapped. Weariness at once weighed him down. He'd aged a hundred years with a single kiss. "And as tribute to the ludicrous tragedy we've written ourselves, why don't you listen to part of the truth that you wanted." After another tense moment, he added, "And since you chose to make advances of your own accord before I could crack and violate you first, maybe it won't sound as appalling to you as I once thought it would."

Mello summoned his resolution and spat out what coherent thoughts he was willing to voice, his delivery like a series of knife thrusts.

"I want nothing but to pull you across the hall to the bedroom right now, Matt. I want those sheets tangled with our enthusiasm. I want your hands defiling me until I lose myself in the sensation of it all. You could blow my mind, Matt. Every bone in my body is aching to let you."

Matt's eyelids fluttered, first in disbelief and then in something desire-muddled as hazel and green glazed over. "I could blow more than—"

Mello snapped over him. "I'd slash this intricate, spider-webbed kidnapping plot apart if it meant that I could have you from now until we both collapsed tomorrow morning. But that can't happen, and you know why. There's too much at stake." Matt's cocky smirk was fading. "So help me God, if you try to argue one more time, I'll blow you to Kingdom Come and finish this alone." His syllables cracked like whips. The cross amulet at the butt of his handgun jangled.

Matt flicked his eyes to the gun again and took an instinctive step back, heels scraping over the floorboards, and Mello knew that he'd finally gotten his message across. He lowered the nozzle of his weapon to the ground, then thought better of it and kept it raised. Emotions played over Matt's features one by one, passing in an indistinguishable blur like the faces on a deck of cards being shuffled. Then Matt gradually began to lift his hands, yielding in slow motion.

It was quite possible — in that instant of fate caught mid-act — that the part of Mello that still privately wished for Matt's opposition realized that no opposition could ever come.

Something in Matt's eyes shifted for good, something that put distance between them and built a gap that Mello would never bridge again. Matt's bare hands were all the way up in sardonic surrender now, and Mello's heart ripped like fabric when the signal of submission presented itself like a ragged white flag.

"You're right, Mello," Matt said, his voice so chilly that Mello almost thought a frigid wind followed it. "But you're a lot of other things besides that. You always have been." Mello wasn't sure he wanted to hear the rest, but he listened. "You're volatile. You're vicious. You scare the living shit out of me, but none of that has ever bothered me much — all things considered."

Mello forced himself to remain calm. "What's your point, Matt?"

"My _point_ is," Matt hissed ferociously, "That out of all those things… and despite what everyone _else _thought of you… I never thought you had a heart like stone." The hacker pulled his gloves out of his back pocket and began to tug them on. "But I guess I get my reality check in the end. I guess I'm just a sorry opportunist, who tried too hard to believe in something beautiful when the beautiful thing was never up for grabs in his merciless world." His goggles went back on next. "Thanks for proving it to me." Mello's trigger finger twitched.

The words stung.

It _all_ stung like Hell with frostbite, but Mello stood there, a concrete wall. He switched himself off. He couldn't bear the remorse in Matt's unforgiving eyes. Those eyes had been dark with craving for him moments ago, but Mello had spoiled Matt's appetite. He watched in silence as the hacker moved to zip his furry vest up to his chin. Held his breath while Matt stalked to the kitchen and back, searching for cigarettes before making his way to the door.

"Don't wait for me. I might not bother to touch base before I have to catch my flight," the hacker announced. "Now I'm _glad _you put us on different airlines. I think if I'm with you another second, _I_ might honestly threaten to kill _you_ as well, Mello." And the menace in Matt's gaze as he retreated said the likelihood of his doing so topped ninety-nine percent.

He couldn't let Matt go like that.

Mello made another flash decision, knowing at once that if fate had not already raised the drawbridge on them, this action surely would.

"Matt. Wait."

Utterly whipped sidekick that he was, Matt grated to a halt. He turned back to meet Mello's stare, something sour on his features as he did as he was told. Mello supposed that old habits died hard. He closed the space between them and seized Matt by the neck.

He melded their lips together once more; it was callous and wicked to do so, even as it was his undiluted sincerity and his surrender to his heart. Matt was stiff at first, but Mello's persuasive maneuvering forced him to respond. It was a hungry rape of Matt's mouth, an affirmation of the dominance Mello had lost when it had been _Matt_ kissing _him_. He pried at Matt's jaw with a steely grip; Matt's taste drove him wild — bittersweet smoke and something warm like spices. Mello kept the kiss slow so that he could savor every brazen hue of it.

If he died with Matt's taste on his tongue, he would ask for nothing else. Because this… this kiss was final. Less a collapse into intimacy and more a confirmation of what they'd just somehow lost. Mello used it as a key to lock their gates inexorably shut. Matt trembled beneath him; the hacker could sense the difference as their tongues mingled hotly.

It would have to be enough. Mello released Matt with a push of dismissal, licking his lips for his last ever taste of fulfillment.

Matt's eyes screamed bloody murder, but without another word, the hacker spun around and banged his way out the door. Booted steps retreated down the front stairs, and Mello felt a freeze like a wail sending chills down his spine. He fled to the bedroom to escape the cold.

Three minutes passed like hours; Mello stood completely still.

Rationality began to overpower his adrenaline at last. Consequence crashed down upon him without mercy.

…What the hell had he just done?

Something terrible had possessed him. Shit, he'd banished Matt. Let him leave without posing a bit of resistance, as if the hacker were a bad case of hiccups. And Mello had done it all for the sake of something that he was no longer sure he believed in. But it couldn't have been any other way.

Mello's teeth were clenched hard enough to send pain through his jaw.

He couldn't take the unfairness of it all. His hands formed fists.

God, no. _Matt._

The first thing to go was the lamp on the bedside table. Mello swept it clean off its surface with a spasm of his arm. Then he stalked back down the hall to the living room again, shaking. He kicked over his armchair — let it thud to the ground in a puff of gray dust.

Now, only _now_ did Mello understand what Matt had felt when Matt had asked him how he knew he wasn't wrong.

The radiator reverberated when Mello lashed out with his foot, but he didn't hear the clang of impact over the wordless roar that evacuated his lungs. He lashed out until the lack of anything else to hit forced him to blink and recapture his focus. Matt's main laptop was on its side. It had gotten in his way; it had been hounding him while he was on a rampage — gothic J suggesting jollity that was unattainable — and Mello had knocked it aside to stop its winking.

"We sold our souls a long time ago, Matt." He whispered into the aftermath in a tone barely audible. "And we tried too hard to forget what that meant."

His crucifix chimed against the zipper of his vest.

* * *

_A/N: As always, thank you so much for reading. Words cannot express how much I want feedback for this chapter. If you do decide to drop a word, it'd be helpful to hear more than just, "OMG, I luved teh yaoi!" I'm actually really nervous about how many subtle nuances and motifs and explanations and realizations I tried to cram in here at once. I need to know if I confused anyone beyond comprehension._

_Also, the next chapter will be the final one._


	7. Swan Song, or Tristan Chord

_A/N: I'm planning a little something special after this last chapter, as a treat to all you readers. I've been getting thoughtful responses back, so I've decided that… anyone who wants to ask me one question may do so, and I'll answer it in the special chapter. Please either PM me with said question or leave it in a review. (One means one. You can maybe weasel your way into two if you have a legitimate follow-up question, but not otherwise.) Also, please try to make the question a meaningful one; I'd appreciate it more._

_Why am I doing this? Because I love interacting with readers and fellow authors. Not only is it an honor to hear what you guys have to say after spending your precious time reading my work, but also… engaging is a learning experience. An author that can't appreciate what other people have to offer is a naïve one indeed. I learn something new every time I take part in discussion, or answer a question, or fangirl with someone. Plus, I'm a reader as well as a writer, so I know how it is to be curious about the motives or inspirations of an author. There are certain authors with whom I would love to converse! Unfortunately, a lot of them fail to engage. I'm not going to be like that. I can't cater to everyone all the time, but by offering something to as many of you as is sane, I can thank you somehow. You all have made fanfiction great for me. It's a two-way relationship and I want to honor that!_

_That's the spiel, and I believe in it wholeheartedly. Take advantage of it, those of you who understand what I mean._

_Now. __Are y__ou ready for this last chapter? I'm still not. I'm really…. Shit._

_

* * *

  
_

**Swan Song (or Tristan Chord)**

Matt smoked outside the convenience store, sucking in fury with every drag.

Violated. Mello's last kiss had _violated _him — taken his soul and ripped it into unrecognizable shreds. Matt never should have laid lips on Mello in the first place. He'd lost control, so maybe he deserved this. Maybe _this_ was what the blond had meant when he'd said that they weren't meant to go there. But damn it… Matt had wanted to plunder Mello's mouth anyway. He couldn't kid himself — he'd _wanted_ every bit of that wild mélange of lips, teeth, and tongue that he had gotten. Even that last kiss — that violation — had been sweet. It was his own fault if the long-term result was that he wanted to hang himself.

Ha ha, long-term. Oh, the mockery.

Matt was in Japan. He'd taken off without stopping back at their little London flat. While he felt naked without his equipment, he had realized he wouldn't need it. Near could recover the appropriate files without Matt's system, and besides, machines did nothing for a corpse. Matt didn't require his possessions to remind him of the plan, either. He had that drilled into his head. He wouldn't have minded his PSP on the lengthy flight back to Kira's home turf, but such complications were trivial. Matt's life's work on his main laptop, on his other various hard drives and discs… what the hell would he need _any_ of it for after tonight? So he'd left them — flown back on his own and thanked heaven that he and Mello had purposely selected separate flights. He'd slept on the plane. Needed coffee upon arrival. Whiled the remaining hours of the day and evening away, perusing the Japanese streets and waiting for Mello to initiate contact.

Fucking Mello. Matt's cigarette crackled. The bell on the door to the convenience store jingled and a tiny old woman hobbled past with four bags.

Matt hated himself for the mess he was in with Mello, but he knew somehow that it had been right. Damn it, that first kiss had been _right_, and Mello's insistence that their union could only bring more pain…. That was bullshit. Matt was smarter than that; he wasn't going to fool himself into any righteous lies. If he wanted Mello, and Mello wanted him, that should have been enough. Yes, there would be loss, but… self-pity be damned! It was worth every moment of heartache. They would lose one another — that was inevitable with what they were about to do, because if by some chance they didn't both die, _one_ of them most certainly would — but so what? The time they had was shrinking rapidly, and that dwindling present was all that mattered. Matt swallowed, hard. It was _worth it_.

Or it should have been, but Mello had refused to see it thus. And Matt hadn't argued, because he knew damn well that Mello had exposed the truth of their somehow preordained, irreversible existence. Mello was right, more right somehow than merely stubborn, more right than Matt's resentment, but Matt didn't have it in himself to work out the hairline details about how. They were stuck with what they'd crafted, and in the end, Matt had accepted it.

So now Matt had a new present to form to.

He dropped his cigarette on the ground — scuffed away its life and smote it like some pagan god. The first step toward an end that rankled. But it was all he had for the next hour or so — the last minutes of his _life_ — and fuck if Matt was going to waste those minutes thinking about what could have been but had failed. Regret wasn't in his repertoire. Matt took what he could get, gave things his best effort, and if shit blew up in his face, he sat back and coped with what grace he could muster. What else _could_ he do, if he lived in a world that was rotten?

Justification for the Inherently World-Weary.

Matt stole a glance at his cell phone clock. It was getting late, but he wasn't about to phone Mello and ask for highlights on what was happening at the other end of the coup. He was content to wait. He switched his focus back to his surroundings.

It was beautiful, the city street he stood on. It had to be — it was the last thing he was going to see, really _see_ before he stepped into that car and hit the gas. He _wanted_ his last vision to be beautiful, wanted something to strike him, and so it did.

The lights were what did it, Matt reflected as he puffed away on another cancer stick. It started with the orange bud of ash at the end of his cigarette and meandered to the flickering streetlight above his head. The beauty was in the sparkle of neon signs, the glow of soft drink machines just inside lit doorways. The signs were missing letters here and there, and the drink machines flashed _SOLD OUT_ in digital alphabets, but that was why it struck him. It wasn't anything ethereal. It was just there, nothing special at all. It was in the taillights of loitering cars; it was in the flash of airplanes as they glided through the sky on overnight schedules. It linked like a chain across the hundreds of LCD screens that connected people through time and space — cell phones, iPods, GPS navigators, handheld video games with online capabilities. Lights shining everywhere, the dim and the glaring in equal coexistence. Lights in the puddles on the slick and pot-holed streets. Stars in the eyes of those who still believed. The lights weren't there to guide, weren't there to illuminate, because these lights weren't beacons — they were commonplace. They just _existed_.

That was beautiful.

Matt finished his cigarette and contemplated another. He felt no craving for nicotine, but thought he ought to treat himself despite that. He'd picked up the cloves again. He'd grown to like their taste.

Matt started for the car. A wispy ribbon of smoke followed his path; it slithered from the cigarette between his fingers and stretched beyond, trailing an aroma that would soon fade in his wake. A vague memory of something left behind, a reminiscent touch of himself wafting through the atmosphere. The car door groaned when he lifted the handle to climb inside. Matt rolled down the window and settled into the seat, watching his dashboard illuminate when he turned the keys in the ignition. Reds, greens, oranges and blues. Buttons and dials and needles on meters. Digits on a clock that was counting down, all of it spelled out in twinkles.

His cell phone rang.

Almost lazily, Matt clicked the receive button and lifted the device to his ear. He didn't speak a greeting, just exhaled his smoke. Watched it float away in his side mirrors to mingle with the exhaust from his gas pipe.

"Matt. It's me."

Matt didn't know what to say.

"Don't hang up." Mello's voice was stringy through the connection. He didn't sound urgent, but he wanted Matt to pay attention.

Ah. _Now_ Matt knew what to say. "Fuck you."

It didn't seem to be the answer Mello wanted. "Listening to me right now will help you get through this, so get a grip."

Ash drifted down to leave a speck of gray on his jeans. Matt left it there, too mesmerized by its delicate, papery quality to brush it off his lap. "If this is about the strategy, I've already got it taken care of."

There was a long pause from Mello.

"Matt, how could you think I'd call about that now?" There was no way to determine whether Mello's sigh was injured or exasperated.

Matt wasn't sure how to handle that question. In truth, he hadn't been sure that Mello would call him at all. He couldn't even say whether he'd been hoping for it. Matt decided the inquiry didn't merit an answer, unless it was the crackle of his burning cigarette.

But Mello, for once in his life, exhibited the patience of a saint. He waited a long, long time, and when Matt made it clear that he would not, _could_ not respond, Mello filled the silence calmly.

"I want to talk. Rationally this time."

A rational conversation with Mello. What a scream. Matt was watching a streetlight change from green to yellow. The yellow orb looked more like the color of grapefruit pulp through the lenses of his goggles. "Isn't it a little late for that type of thing?" he asked.

"Matt…."

The way Mello murmured his name was all at once infuriating. Matt sat up straight as a ramrod and exploded into the receiver.

"It's been fun, Mello. It really has, don't get me wrong. I even got worked up enough to start us getting intimate, which I never would have expected of myself after everything I finally learned. But other than that amusing discovery to jar my sense of self-establishment, we've had the smoothest sailing that people of our profession can muster and I'm grateful for the safe ride, even if it's about to end bumpy. So shut up and don't ruin that." It was the longest tangle of words Matt had spoken all day. He didn't know where it had stemmed from, but it felt like a floodgate letting loose sarcasm that would have been better off dammed. It wasn't entirely Mello's fault.

Mello's words were quiet when he recovered from the blow. "I didn't expect civil treatment when I dialed your number, but you know better than to work yourself up before our big move, Matt. Why can't—"

Matt cut Mello off. He didn't have to hesitate this time. "Because you're too late. I mean, we fought against ourselves pretty hard as it was, but this is really pushing it." Matt checked the clock on his dashboard. "Thirteen minutes until show time, and you're on the opposite side of the city trying to change this again at the last second. I'm impressed with your audacity." Floodgates still belching cold water.

"Don't lash out at me because you're still fucking bitter," Mello erupted, voice finally cracking and leaping from composed to conflicted. It was a surrender to the desperation echoed in Matt's own sentiments. "You're wrong. I'm not daft enough to hope to change anything, so shut the fuck up and let me say my piece." A ragged breath. "Look. I'm not foolish enough, or… or smart enough to back down. Neither are you, and you know it. The statistics are not in our favor and we're going to die tonight unless there's a miracle. And fuck it all, Matt, but I don't believe in miracles any more. That said, there's something that I know won't make a damn bit of difference now, but still I… if you don't hear it, I…." Mello's voice failed him.

Matt had no sympathy for the pained sounding break. He snorted. The snort turned into a mirthless laugh.

Mello released a muffled string of curse words on the other end of the line. "Fucking balls, Matt, you cunt-faced piece of horse shit, are you refusing to listen when I'm trying to tell you that I—"

"That you love me, Mello?" Matt cut in faster than a gunshot, and when Mello fell frighteningly silent, Matt forgot to exhale. He tried again to get the truth. "Don't be a jackass." But something crept up beneath the bitterness and caused Matt's stomach to lurch. Suddenly his insides were a jumble of longing and uncertainty.

"Mello. What the hell are you really trying to say to me?" Silence.

Did Mello…?

It was growing harder to breathe.

"…Nothing, Matt. I'm not trying to say anything at all." Mello answered him in a hard, clipped murmur.

Matt realized with another nauseated jolt that his haste to lash out had lost something for them both. They'd never had much, and they'd already lost it all, but that had been half a chance at _something_, sliding by right there practically postmortem. God, how relentlessly the pinpricks of irony jabbed him. Matt had done it again. Kissed his real sentiments goodbye without anybody forcing him into it. Every time, he had done it.

Every time he _would_ do it, until they were both dead. Until they had done what they came there to do. He didn't have what it took to try anything else, did he? So he'd kissed it goodbye.

God, no. _Fuck._

Mello….

Matt closed his eyes and bit down on his knuckles. A moment later, he replaced them with his cigarette and stared again at the traffic light.

"If we execute this as planned, we can't fail," Mello went on, sounding like he was adjusting something on his bike as he talked. "Your half of the mission shouldn't take more than—"

Matt exhaled a puff of smoke. "Six or seven minutes — a real quickie. I know. Quit wasting your last breaths, for Chrissake." The part of himself that he just couldn't quell still suffered, deafened by the echo of what had nearly been said but wasn't just seconds before. Matt tried hard not to let his voice betray his heartache.

"I wasn't finished," Mello sighed. "Just listen. We're not going to get any glory for this, but that never stopped you." Matt watched a red Corvette zip by without really seeing it, his throat burning. "You have my gratitude for that, Matt." Then, quieter, "_Mail_. Mail Jeevas."

A black notebook with killing powers might as well have dropped onto the hood of Matt's car.

For a twisted moment, Mello's declaration of gratitude amused him. A split second later, Matt swallowed, and the swallow lumped thick in his throat like molasses. "Jesus, if you're thanking me for something with my real name, then we really must be dying, huh?"

"I'm not made of stone the way you think, Matt. I'd thank you for more than just that if I thought you would listen."

Matt blinked back the sudden moisture that was trying to drown his eyes. "You never know," he said. "I might hear you out." His stomach was trying to kill him ahead of schedule with its hard knotting. Why Mello? Why did he have to feel this way about _Mello_, when all of it was about to go to shit in a huge farrago of violence?

It was like Mello had caught the despairing look on his face. But he hadn't, because they were five point three miles apart, strategically placed. He said softly, "Don't kid yourself, Matt. You'd just get angry at the world once you heard me put words to something that could have only ever been a dream."

Even now, even on their deathbeds, it was amazing how well Mello knew him. Matt didn't know what to say.

His car engine idled. A homeless man hollered something from the curb. For a precious moment, he let his thoughts drift. Mello stayed on the line, and the city din clamored on outside of them — outside of their doubts, outside of their regrets, outside of their desires.

"Mello, how did you find out that I was tailing you in Regent's Park?" It came to his mind unbidden. He didn't know why he wanted to know.

Mello let the pause play out longer before he answered. Then, "Swans, Matt."

Matt had to make Mello repeat himself.

"The swans on the bank," Mello said, and he must have put his helmet on at last, because his voice sounded tinny. Matt tried not to interrupt — fought not to ask him to take the helmet off. He wanted to hear _Mello_, talking to him over the airwaves before they had to go. "I was watching the swans. The male was guarding their territory from the direction of the water, but at one point, the female swan looked up."

"You're telling me that swans gave me away," Matt interrupted. It was almost funny.

"There was nothing over there, Matt. Nothing she could see, but she sensed something. I looked too, and there weren't any other animals. It could only be a person, standing just out of sight."

"But you didn't know it was me?"

"Of course I knew, Matt."

Of course he did.

Because Mello knew him best. Mello, the one who'd tagged along with him to the attic space every night to talk about girls and listen to the opera. Mello, who'd once poked fun at him for always wearing stripes. The person that had made him laugh, made him yell, rendered him ferocious with wrath and senseless with desire all in one day. The one that had come back to find _him_, after years of separation because he couldn't stay away. Mello — _Mihael Keehl_ — who had caught him in the park because of a stupid pair of swans.

Fuck, he couldn't see the dashboard, but Matt wasn't going to let the tears fall. He'd been a bitch enough already.

"I found a CD with your things," Mello was saying, and Matt inhaled smoke to send a sedative to his shaking hands.

"What CD?"

"The score to Tristan and Isolde."

Matt had to lean forward and clutch the steering wheel to stop his voice from quaking. "Oh yeah — picked that up when I went by the opera house after Wammy's. I guess I couldn't help myself. _Tristan und Isolde. _It was playing that night." He let a beat pass when Mello didn't offer a reply. There was something Matt wanted to ask, something he didn't _dare_ to, because he was damned shaken up already, but he had to know. When he asked, it came out more a statement than a question, half expectant and half afraid.

"You remember that whole opera thing, don't you."

It seemed forever before Mello responded. Matt listened to the way the blond's breaths merged with the traffic sounds. "I do."

Relief eased some of the tension. "Pretty strange for me to run into it again now, huh?"

"It was my favorite."

Matt knew. He remembered. "Keep the CD then — I don't need it back for a while."

"That's funny, Matt."

"That's what's called Irony."

Suddenly there were sirens raging in the background. Matt checked his rearview mirror, but he saw no flashing lights.

Not on his end, then. Mello's.

"We're out of time, Matt."

The dashboard clock agreed. It was time to make their move. Matt toed the gas, hovered over the shift stick, his body a slave of routine. The number of times he'd gone over this moment in his head…. But he wasn't ready to pull away from the curb yet.

Mello was. Matt heard his motorcycle engine through the cell phone's static speakers.

"Is that the order for me to get going?" Matt inquired.

Mello's dry laugh reached him over the engine sounds. "It was never an order, Matt. You chose to go through with your half just like I chose to go through with mine."

Matt stubbed out his cigarette on the seat cushion beside him, caring nothing for the mark it would leave. Pulled on his gloves. "That's right. I did." The roar of sirens was louder now, the blood that pounded in his ears nothing but an undertone beneath them.

"I guess this is goodbye, Mello."

Real words evacuated Mello's vocabulary. "Matt, shit. D-damn it. _Fuck_."

"What's wrong?" But Matt shouldn't have asked. He already knew.

Emotion, ringing on Mello's lips like bells. "Shit, in case it counts for anything once we're corpses, you need to know that I never meant to hurt y—"

Matt cut him off, knowing that if Mello said anything more, Matt would lose himself. He'd jerk the car into a three-point turn and run their plan down with treaded tires, no remorse in doing so. And Mello would reverse tactics right beside him. "Don't, Mello. Don't even do that to yourself. It's okay. I forgive you."

"Matt—"

"Just feed that Takada bitch some good old fashioned brimstone for me, all right? Tell her I'll have Hellfire for dessert when she comes down."

"Matt, don't be unnecessarily reckless, because I—"

Matt snapped his phone shut. He gunned the engine.

He could barely think for the thunder in his blood, it all went so damn _fast_.

Forty miles per hour over the speed limit for four and a half miles; two smoking back tires as he skidded into position from the roundabout direction that he'd come, in front of the crowd of bystanders.

One click that Matt hardly heard, but that deafened him — trigger locking into place as he fired the smoke bomb that shrouded his targets. Six police officers and one of Takada's attendants vanishing into the fog, plus eight civilians. Seven precious seconds to fling his car back into gear, to pull a U-ey and to get the fuck out.

_Fifty_ miles per hour over the speed limit; four weeks of Driver's Ed shot to hell and back on half a tank of gas. Two red lights run without looking and a slam into a guardrail on his third impulsive corner. Three police cars on his tail. A shattering car crash left in his wake when he floored it through a busy intersection….

One major stroke of bad luck, pulling onto a stretch of highway where he thought he might be in the clear. Then again, the predicament was kind of expected.

He still hadn't slowed down.

Too many black vehicles to count, in a semi-circular barricade blocking his escape. A slam on the brakes and a long, long pause as Matt's car skidded and rocked with the swift stop.

Matt squinted at the brightness of the flashers.

Too few cigarettes left for him to want to admit to their number. Five seconds to light his last — two to start the flame and three to inhale. Was this what his life had added up to? Statistics just not in his favor.

He couldn't determine the number of voices screaming at him to step out of his vehicle, but it was okay — Matt's calculator couldn't compute by then anyway.

He climbed out of the car, talking to buy time, but not really concentrating on what it was he said. His last seconds were too precious to waste with stringing words together for the benefit of his killers. Myriad guns were trained on him in a line — guns he didn't think the Japanese were allowed to _carry_ — a long row of protection against his vigilante justice.

L's justice.

_Their_ justice.

He put up his hands like he'd seen in the movies. He wasn't sure that he wanted to die.

An onslaught of bullets flew thick and fatal, rattling him like a jar of marbles he remembered on a shelf in an attic somewhere special.

His back hit the hood of the car and he went down. He couldn't keep track of his fading vitality, but….

One final thought, as his cigarette puttered out in a pool of his own fluids:

_What we needed was another chance._

— x —

Mello pulled the helmet from his head inside the delivery truck, hardly seeing the woman in front of him as he told her to strip down and stay quiet. He was supposed to be feeding her brimstone, but he wasn't entirely sure he could do that. He couldn't summon the cruelty.

After all, they had never been ruthless criminals. Mello hadn't meant to come as close as he had, but Matt had never toed the line, at least. Mostly guilty by association. They'd sinned, they'd killed, but they weren't inhuman. They had never wanted to be. They were only people — people driven by justice and a cause.

People who would die for an ignorant, corrupted world that would never know their names or faces. Never smile or tell them thank you.

Matt would call that Irony.

Mello dropped off the package that contained his captive's clothes and slid into the driver's seat of the stolen truck. Tossed Kiyomi Takada a glare through the window. Slipped a familiar CD into the player and began to drive.

He wanted the music to wash him away — to make his mind a blackboard and erase everything chalked on its surface until he had a clean slate. Empty space to fill up with just the opera. With a story that was tragic indeed, but still less painful than his own.

The opening bars of the opera rang out, and as they did, Richard Wagner's written commentary to the prelude flew thick and fast across Mello's blackboard, spidery and unforgiving.

_And henceforth no end to the yearning, longing, rapture, and misery of love: world, power, fame, honor, chivalry, loyalty, and friendship, scattered like an insubstantial dream…._

Mello's fondness for the opera had always been synonymous with Wagner's explanation of the prelude — nothing else. Not the warbling, tremulous vocals, not the intricate German libretti. It wasn't the soprano. It wasn't the lead violin.

Matt had asked him if he remembered.

Mello remembered it all. Of course he remembered. He'd never forgotten. Not once. He'd recalled it again long before Matt had mentioned his trip to the opera house, long before Matt had deemed it necessary to _ask_ him if he remembered. Mello would never, never forget. The past was all they had, and his past with Matt had been something worth keeping in his memories. To forget would have been to deny it ever happened, and Mello couldn't live with that kind of gap in his existence. Yes… he remembered, and he'd cherished it always.

_One thing alone left living: longing, longing unquenchable, desire forever renewing itself, craving and languishing._

The video screen on his monitor flickered, caught his eye with a flash of inevitable red paint. The music was hanging on a rest. There was a bullet-riddled car frame.

A whispered apology, no words fit to make it feel like enough.

And words, the god damned words of Richard Wagner, scrawling across the blackboard of his mind in screeches, raking gorges over his brain tissue and making him ache. Mello wanted to turn it off, but that one chord was coming, that one chord that seemed to capture the pang in his chest and wrench it until it turned torturous. He felt icy with fright, yet afire with everything he wanted and couldn't have and then—

Father in Heaven, the Tristan Chord, right as he pulled into the old ruined church.

Low and slow, it dragged out his conclusion. Wavering, androgynous — it didn't seem to fit the musical pattern. Tense, feverish almost; Mello felt held in suspense, as if suddenly his blackboard had been cleared for good and he'd been left without chalk. Musicians had put a name to those mournful notes, and reproduced the chord again and again for gut-wrenching effect long after Wagner's time.

_One sole redemption: death, surcease of being, the sleep that knows no waking!_

It was _them_. The Tristan Chord — a step away from the traditional, a sense of the doomed. It was their essence, their story, and it was indisputable and cataclysmic. Mello's blood ceased to flow as he felt a spasm starting in his chest, his left arm gone limp.

But the truck was parked in Nagano; he had seen this coming.

White-hot embers…. Feed Takada brimstone, and Matt — _dead_ — ringing in his ears — struggle and the shattered glass of the back window — little scrap of paper with his name written down. Confusion — shooting pangs, and Matt? — Almighty Father — he couldn't… everything black, black, black, with no chalk and such _pain_… the… their opera, it always….

His life expired. Mello slumped across the steering wheel.

_Matt, don't be unnecessarily reckless, because I'll find you again and we'll start over._

The Tristan Chord played on into the silence.


	8. Post Chapter Goodies

_GREETINGS, READERS.  
_

_So, here is the special something that I had planned for you all after the last chapter. It's my Author's Bloopers and your submitted questions!  
_

_Do not, _do not_, **DO NOT** read this bit until you've let the regular story sink in. Matt and Mello deserve that respect. I DEMAND THAT YOU CRY FIRST AND LAUGH LATER.  
_

_Anyway. A little explanation: _

_I had the Demons of Writing driving me for days without sleep when I wrote Tristan Chord. The exhaustion got to me. I get silly when I'm tired. This is all shit that I actually typed. And then saved. This is how you have bloopers.  
_

_...Four years later, by the way. FOUR YEARS LATER. I wrote this fic in spring 2008, and promised you things then, and it's currently June 2012. (DON'TKILLME.) _

_Onward and upward, chaps. Have fun with your extras._

* * *

**BLOOPERS**

**1. SING IT, MELLO!**

"What I want to ask you," Matt began again, but this time Mello was busy stashing cans of soup in the cupboards, "Is whether or not you've really thought this whole thing through. I mean really. I know you've timed out everything. The fucking plan is flawless, Mello, I know that, but did you think about anything else? Like us? Our lives, and whether or not it's too soon, or why going back to Wammy's would drive things in so much deeper than it should have? Shit, I can't even piece together what I—"

"Matt," Mello cut in suddenly. He wasn't sure what to say. How could he get Matt to understand?

What language could he possibly use that would communicate all he was feeling?

Matt was still waiting for a response. "Well?"

"Matt, the truth is…." Mello drew away from the countertop and spread his arms. He had no other choice. "Yuri the only one for me! Tried so hard to make you see. Yuri the only one for me, priceless like a PS3."

Matt stared.

"YOU AND I MAKE NINTENDO Wii~!"

_(For those not in the know, the song is "Yuri The Only One" by the LeetStreet Boys.)_

**2. WAKEY, WAKEY, EGGS N' BAKEY?**

But somehow it felt more significant than that, and Matt didn't want to read into it any further. Mello was sprawled across his bed, breathing so shallowly that he appeared comatose. Matt looked him up and down.

Mello's eye creaked open. "Matt, you're so obvious. You want to wake me up and do me hard at this point, don't you?"

Matt paused. He wasn't sure this was how the scene was supposed to go, but he wasn't going to lie about his urges. "Fucking yes."

"But if you give in and do so, reader respect for this story will drop by at least forty three percent, or thereabouts. Because we'll have missed the point entirely."

"…You have no idea what our readers are like at all, do you."

Mello didn't seem to hear him. "Hmm, I wonder why I felt the need to speak in percentages just now? It's probably because L isn't in this fic. We've gone so far from actual Death Note… _and_ we've ruined the story for the author by breaking out of script like this. She's going to have to write this scene all over again."

"Are you getting a boner?"

Mello looked torn. "We really ought to learn to reign in our libido."

Matt licked his lips. He… he really wasn't paying attention.

Mello quirked an eyebrow. "Your mind is still right in the gutter, isn't it."

Matt grinned.

The author shoved her chair away from her desk and stormed away from her computer, utterly unable to focus on character development for want of fitting in a very naughty scene.

There was only silence.

"Matt, are we on our own now?"

Matt glanced around. "Looks like it."

"LET'S GET TO IT, THEN."

**3. TAILING MELLO – TYPING FAIL**

He'd never seen Mello like this, never known the blond to just… wander. Maybe he was collecting his thoughts. Lord knew Matt often needed to do the same, especially lately.

Then it seemed that Nekko picked up speed.

...

That has got to be the strangest typo in existence.

_(N is right next to M, and K right next to L. Apparently I shifted over one and missed my target keys.)_

**4. TAILING MELLO – TYPING FAIL AGAIN.**

Then it seemed that Me;;o picked up speed. Mellko. MRLLO. FUCK SHIT SONOF ABITCH MELLO GOD DAMMIT ASS FUCKING BULLSHIT….

**5. ALLITERATION WHORE**

He went for the chocolate instead — tore it from the stash on the countertop and sank his teeth into a bar of the stuff with vampiric lust. Instantaneous, bittersweet gratification. Sugary shield of sedation and sanctuary.

…Wow, so superfluous. Someone super-stupid sincerely slobbers over stuff that (sometimes) subverts the style and solemnity of serious subjects and sentences. Save Silver Sole.

**6. MATT'S LAPTOP**

As Mello laid his hands over the laptop, he felt a dash of impunity. Matt would never know that his laptop had been explored in his absence. Mello was invading a privacy that Matt had always taken for granted, and it filled him with a sense of defiance.

He tapped the space bar. The screensaver vanished.

Mello froze as a text box appeared and a phantom of cyberspace began typing a message across the screen.

_HELLO MELLO. WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE TO THIS COMPUTER?_

Mello's eyes widened. What the…? There was a pause. The screen kept talking at him.

_I SEE YOU HESITATING. STATE YOUR BUSINESS WITH THIS LAPTOP, PLEASE._

Mello drew away from the screen. Bloody Mary. Why did he say _please?_

Matt was really playing it quirky, wasn't he. But Mello supposed it was a quirk of the trade. Should he type an answer into the text box? His fingers hesitated over the keys, but when he looked up again, more text was sprawling over the blank space.

_MELLO… THIS IS ACTUALLY NEAR. I'VE BEEN MONITORING THIS CONNECTION, AND JUST SO YOU KNOW… I TOTALLY CAUGHT MATT WANKING OFF LAST NIGHT. CAN YOU TELL HIM TO MOVE HIS PORN STASH TO HIS SMARTPHONE INSTEAD?_

**7. MATT'S LAPTOP – TAKE 2**

He tapped the space bar. The screensaver vanished.

Matt flew from Mello's blind spot and charged him like a pit bull.

"NOBODY TOUCHES MY LAPTOP! I'LL KILL YOUUU."

"No no no no — I didn't mean to rape your keyboard — I'M SORRYYYY!"

**8. THE TUBE STATION**

A little girl in mousy pigtails watched him pick at the fur around his collar. He stilled his hands and scanned the mass of exiting bodies when the train grated to a halt after what felt like hours.

Matt saw Mello getting off the car, and away he rocketed himself, pressing through the rush of people to make sure he didn't miss—

"_Please mind the gap between the train and the platform when exiting th—_" THUNK.

Matt looked down at his boot, now jammed. "Damn it."

* * *

**READER QUESTIONS**

**1. From _OvenBased_**: "What is it that you think, personally, drove Mello and Matt to do what they did, ultimately? Was it to stick it in the face to Kira, Near, all that crap, one last time? Or was it some sort of memorial to L's legacy? Or, was it a combination of all this and more? Tell me my dear, what do you think it was?"

I think they told themselves that it was to defeat Kira and save the world. They told themselves it was to follow up on L's great mission, because they loved L so, and they were sad about his passing. They told themselves they would let themselves die to give Near what he needed to finish the job, the moment they realized that they themselves couldn't. They told themselves ALL those things, and to some degree, they definitely believed it, so therefore it really was true. But in the end, I think the reason for their suicide plan was simpler than all that.

I think two Wammy's orphans got tired, and jaded. Became trapped completely in a maze they were certain it was too late to get out of. I think they were too stubborn to change their minds, or maybe… they were just too scared to try. Too scared to break out of the world they'd grown up in, too fragile and weary to risk something beyond the kind of risks they were already used to. They were really only teenagers, no matter how genius their minds….

I think Matt and Mello simply gave up. And maybe they knew it a little, but in the end, they were okay with that. It was easier, and it hurt them less that way, because once you're dead the hurting stops. I think they thought maybe there'd be something better in the afterlife to help them start again – this time without the weight of what fate dumped on them when they were so small they didn't even have a choice.

**2. From _Living in a Fantasy_**: "Do you think that, not in the context of your story, but the duo in general, that either of them would ever have called off the plan? Not really in a canon sense, since we don't know how close Matt and Mello really were, although I expect they were at least somewhat close of friends."

I think Mello would definitely call it off, if he honestly saw the right window to do so. (He would only be able to if there were still a surefire way to catch Kira.) Mello resents Near, and will probably always have an urge to prove that he's better than Near, so if there were a way for him to live another day to continue that rivalry, Mello would make it happen. And then he'd kick Near's ass.

I think if Matt sat back and had a good long time to evaluate his situation, he'd decide that his own desires and motives were more important than the suicide plan (but again, only if catching Kira were still ensured somehow, even without his involvement). He'd pull out and leave Mello to whatever devices, and just say, "Fuck you guys." He'd go do what makes him happy, and he'd be glad to be free of the bullshit.

**3. From _slashhack_**: "Mello knows that Kira & co. have his real name. he knows Takada is in contact with Kira. but he takes his helmet off in front of her (before he knows Matt is dead) and gives her a clear shot of his face. why would he do that? he must know that it's that action above any others that ensures his death. even if Matt had lived, Mello had already essentially committed suicide."

I agree. Mello had to have known exactly what he was doing; he was far too smart to make a rookie mistake. I'm of the opinion that he did it deliberately, because he understood by then that he would have to die - to make the plan work, and because… he was ready. But I know others are of the opinion that Mello _did_ make a mistake, because he was too distracted about Matt…. There's no real way to tell, I suppose. It's a great question to contemplate.

**4. From**: "What was YOUR idea about why Mello refused to give in to what he wanted?"

Assuming that by "what he wanted" you mean his desire for Matt, then…. I think Mello staved off any collapse into intimacy for two reasons. The first reason is the reason Mello gives Matt. If they got lost in each other, they would let go of the world, and then the world would be fucked. Lovers are selfish; they see the world only as it revolves around them. Mello knew they couldn't afford to act like that if they wanted to catch Kira.

The second reason Mello avoided giving in was because I think he was scared. Scared of what so much passion would do to him. Scared of the effort it would take to reevaluate. Also, scared of what would happen _after_ he got what he wanted. What if after indulging, his tense relationship with Matt wasn't worth it any more? What if Mello decided he and Matt would never be able to date seriously? Imagine how Mello would hate himself if he threw the world to the dogs for what ended up to be only a fling.

The idea behind Mello's wanting to essentially _preserve the wanting _seems a little masochistic and stupid at first, but, if you think about it… maybe Mello just didn't want to ruin the holiness of such strong feelings by changing them up. If he only had a few days left, why not just accept – and dive into - the experience? Fuck if he'd want his last experience on earth to be anything _less_ than epic sexual tension with a firebomb like Matt.

**5. From _Qwicka_**: "Do you think that Mello and Matt only realised there was something more between them because they knew they were going to die? If they had more time, would they not have realised in the first place or would they have gotten further?"

To the first question, a resounding YES. I mean, I'm sure Mello, at least, realized his attraction to Matt a lot sooner. But it only became painfully potent when he began to understand he might never get to grasp it. When you know you can't have something, isn't there a tendency to obsess over it more? And the longer Mello focused on it, of course the stronger he realized the feeling of attraction was.

In Matt's case, I think he's dense, and I think his light bulb definitely only went on because the situation was urgent, and he was running out of time. To your second question, if they had more time…. They probably would have eventually realized. But it may have taken years and years. If they ever followed through, they might have gotten farther… but would it feel as sweet? Probably not. It's only things we have for a limited time that we tend to treasure more in life, don't you think?


End file.
